Josh Hawley May Be A Terrible Human Being (And Senator), But He Still Gets Fair Use Rights
from the don't-abuse-copyright-even-against-those-you-hate dept
Josh Hawley sucks. I disagree with him on about just about everything. And I am appalled by his support of the rioters who invaded the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. It’s disappointing and shameful that a United States Senator would endorse a riot, especially a riot intended to challenge the indisputably legitimate election of the President of the United States. But the First Amendment says Hawley is entitled to his opinion, and he’s entitled to express it. And he’s entitled to quote other people to make his point.
Surprisingly, some people disagree. On April 10, Mickey H. Osterreicher published an op-ed in the Kansas City Star, arguing that Hawley shouldn’t and can’t use an iconic photograph of himself supporting the January 6 rioters to sell campaign merchandise. I endorse the shouldn’t in spades. Hawley’s actions were embarrassing, and it’s even more embarrassing that he’s capitalizing on them. But I disagree with the can’t. Hawley can absolutely use the photograph. And that’s a good thing.
In a nutshell, Osterreicher’s argument is that the photograph is protected by copyright, so the photographer (or copyright owner?) can dictate how it’s used.
No. That is ridiculously wrong. Yes, whoever owns the copyright in the photo is entitled to control its use, in order to generate a profit. But their rights are limited by the fair use doctrine, which says that people are entitled to use copyrighted works in order to criticize them.
Josh Hawley is using a very well-known photograph of himself to criticize people who criticize him for supporting the January 6 rioters. That is precisely the kind of use the fair use doctrine was intended to protect. In fact, it is the kind of parodic use that the founding fathers used to criticize loyalists in the Federalist Papers.
Fair use ensures copyright doesn’t violate the First Amendment. After all, copyright only regulates commercial speech. Why would anyone file an infringement claim, unless someone was competing with them? We all know that’s wrong. People use copyright claims because they want to silence people they dislike. That’s wrong. And it’s crummy. Some copyright lawyers like to pretend fair use is complicated. Give me a break. Every news organization relies on fair use every time it publishes a quotation.
Is there a copyright problem here? LOL. The photographer wanted to license, but only when convenient.
Let’s tell it like it is. This photographer wants to tell Senator Josh Hawley to shut up. And they want the government to tell him to shut up because they own a copyright on a photograph they took of him without his permission, and they don’t want him to use it.
It’s ok to think Josh Hawley sucks. But don’t be a landlord about it. You made your point, he’s entitled to make his.
Filed Under: copyright, fair use, josh hawley
Comments on “Josh Hawley May Be A Terrible Human Being (And Senator), But He Still Gets Fair Use Rights”
Josh Hawley is a Nazi who supported a coup and I don’t think that Nazis who support coups deserve the right to use a photo that they don’t own to raise funds for their re-election so that they can keep furthering their bullshit Nazi aims. I think we should indeed be using copyright and other tools to stop Nazis from making money.
Re:
While I sympathize with your anti-Nazi stance, it could create a dangerous legal precedent that would apply to non-Nazis.
Re: Re:
Why does “Nazis shouldn’t have the same right as everyone else” set a “dangerous legal precedent”? Please tell me why you think we should tolerate Nazis like Josh Hawley and give them the same rights as us in their attempts to replace our government with a fascist theocracy.
Re: Re: Re:
You misunderstand. Telling that the police is on the side of Josh Hawley, I would say that Nazis having the same rights as us would be an improvement; as of now, they have far more rights than marginalized people in the US.
I don’t want them to install a fascist dictatorship either. But we don’t do that by tossing out rights that will then be unable to be used by marginalized people like in Texas or Florida.
Re: Re: Re:
Let’s forget for a moment that the 1A covers this matter pretty much spot on… Even then, the point stands because very similar things have occurred in the past. With awful results for people’s rights in general, not just the intended target.
First example that comes to mind is “communists”. Check your history books. You might want a few other keywords such as “red scare” or “mccarthyism”.
Also, my favorite answer to this kind of “novel idea”: if criminals don’t have rights, then neither do you.
You can be accused of being a nazi. Or new exceptions can be made for communists next… then union workers… Or the definition of nazi can be broadened. (It seems like some people have a hard time defining what a nazi is nowadays.) All things that have happened with other sensitive subjects.
Re: Re: Re:
“Why does “Nazis shouldn’t have the same right as everyone else” set a “dangerous legal precedent”?”
Because while most right-minded human beings will agree that Nazis are bad, the precedent of allowing them less rights than others can be used to attack other groups who deserve more.
Today, we’re attacking Nazis, but if the Trump cult get power again all of a sudden you’ve given them the power to attack people you do consider worthy of rights.
Re: Re: Re: Nazis
What I didn’t see addressed is the people and process you envision for revoking a person’s civil rights. Does the president get to decide, or what?
Re:
Nazis have civil rights, too. Or would you prefer we suspend the Constitution for “those kinds of people”?
Re: Re:
I’m arguing that they shouldn’t. The events of the last 6 years, longer than that if we go back to the GamerGate bullshit, shows that they shouldn’t.
Suspending the Constitution for people who would seek to suspend the Constitution and replace it with a fascist and theocratic version of it actually sounds good. Let’s do that.
Re: Re: Re:
You’re doing a piss poor job of it.
Sure, you can keep trying to convince me that a certain “out group” deserves no civil rights. But I’ll tell you, again and again, that doing so would set a precedent for someone else in power to decide that another “out group”—e.g., trans people—deserves the same treatment.
I have no sympathies for Nazis; if they get punched in the face, I’ll laugh my ass off at it. (Repeatedly!) That doesn’t mean I endorse a Nazi-specific version of the fucking Purge—and you won’t get me to endorse one. Humiliation, intimidation, or violence won’t change my mind; outside of those three options, you have nothing.
Re: Re: Re:2
Stephen T. Stone is right. You give Nazis a millimeter and they’ll take a light year, and that includes violations of liberties.
Re: Re: Re:3
We have not given them a millimeter, and they have been taking miles and miles and miles. Please look at the anti-LGBTQ legislation in Florida, Texas, and more.
These were not some pushback or retaliation against progressives passing laws that stopped Nazis from having rights. The laws that criminalize being queer, or being a supportive parent of a queer kid that’s questioning their gender identity, they’re being passed because these Nazis hate queer people and support straight cis white nationalism.
There’s no out-speeching or out-proceduring the likes of these Nazis who have well-heeled donors and supporters, alongside their rabid faith that a white America is the only America that should exist that lets them ignore any and all reality. This is why these Nazis like Josh Hawley don’t deserve rights.
Re: Re: Re:4
I don’t disagree about how harmful their legislation and their violent ideology is. I just think that you haven’t thought through your tactics. What’s to stop the copyright owner using copyright to silence, say, Bernie Sanders or Ron Wyden?
Re: Re: Re:5
What are your tactics then? What do you think we should be doing that we aren’t already doing?
Does stopping a politician from selling a coffee mug or t-shirt with a photo they don’t own truly constitute “being silenced”? This question gives the same vibe as right-wingers complaining about being “silenced” when they have so many other avenues avialable to them. They can take another picture, have other photo ops, and so forth that they make sure they own all the copyright for.
Re: Re: Re:4
Would also like to point out that those laws, harmful as they are, were enacted by representatives voted by the people of that state.
Respectfully, you should be looking to sponsor campaigns against those representatives, showing the harms they are doing.
Re: Re: Re:2
An I’ll tell you, again and again, that they don’t care about precedent. They are campaigning right now on the purge of LGBTQ+ people and more without anybody having goaded them on. They aren’t waiting for a permission slip, they’re seeking to engage in genocide of LGBTQ+ people today. Playing by the outdated rules, going high while they always go low, and lower, and lower, will not stop them or make them see the error of their ways.
Re: Re: Re:3
This has nothing to do with “going high while they always go low” but everything to do with not handing them the same tools with which to destroy marginalized groups. It’s not so much about Nazis honoring precedent I’m worried about (because they don’t) but seeing what they can get away with. I don’t want them to be handed any judicial sanction for their atrocities when we show them how to do so.
Re: Re: Re:4
I would like to reiterate that they haven’t waited for us to hand them the tools. They’ve created the tools themselves just fine and dandy. I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand. LGBTQ+ people and more are being targeted now out of sheer hatred, and are getting away with it now. They created the tools, we didn’t hand them the tools. The “If we do this to them, they’ll just do the same to us!!” logic falls apart in that regard.
Re: Re: Re:5
Your argument is that to prevent a dictatorship, we should establish a dictatorship. There is little difference between the two outcomes.
Re: Re: Re:6
Wanting a society where Nazis can’t gain ground in political arenas and succeed in their bigoted legislative aims like they have in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and more is not me wanting a dictatorship. Other countries in Europe have proven that they can do this just fine and dandy without being dictatorships.
Re: Re: Re:7
You have literally advocated for the suspension of civil rights for those you deem to be Nazis. How is that not wanting the creation of at least a similar kind of dictatorship that we saw in Nazi Germany—one where the civil rights of Jews were eroded and eventually erased for the supposed good of the country?
Re: Re: Re:8
Because, in the part of my comment you oh so conveniently excised to make your position look better:
Re: Re: Re:9
Do those other countries suspend all the civil rights of Nazis?
Re: Re: Re:10
Here’s more:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/germanys-laws-antisemitic-hate-speech-nazi-propaganda-holocaust-denial/
Re: Re: Re:11
None of which denies them any civil rights.
Re: Re: Re:9
I have news for you, the far right exists in Europe, it is just that they cannot gain much traction. That may have something to do with the mainstream right politics in Europe being to the left of the US democrats, and providing social safety nets, and enabling effective regulators.
Re: Re: Re:10
Agreed. I would say it’s more that. Nazis (or crypto-fascists) definitely exist in Europe under different flags, but Europe’s governments seem to take care of their citizens in ways wherein US governments aren’t interested.
Re: Re: Re:10
You haven’t been reading up on the state of French politics recently, have you?
Re: Re: Re:3
I refuse to believe we absolutely must suspend the Constitution to stop Nazis and authoritarians. Your attempts to guilt trip me won’t change my mind.
Re: Re: Re:4
Then please tell me how you think we should solve the issue of Nazis and authoritarians continuing to gain ground via blatantly ignoring and suspending the Consitution themselves to get what they want.
Re: Re: Re:5
Obviously you think the answer is to “blatantly ignor[e] and suspend…the Constitution…to get what [you] want”.
Re: Re: Re:6
And what I want is for Nazis to have their ability to harass and hate and hurt people who aren’t like them to be heavily curtailed.
Please look at what these Nazis believe and what they want to do. How does removing their rights make the people who would seek to remove those rights the bad guys? All you do is abstract the issue out into it being “speech you don’t like”.
Nazis persecuting people is not “speech you don’t like”. It’s Nazis persecuting people.
Re: Re: Re:7
You advocate for (at a bare minimum) curtailing the civil rights of people you blame for the ills of your country. The leap from where you are to where they are looks like a short one.
Re: Re: Re:8
“You want to deny Nazis their rights. That makes you a Nazi!” isn’t the epic pwnage that you think it is.
Re: Re: Re:9
Neither is whatever you’re doing in these comments, but you’re still doing it.
Re: Re: Re:5
I don’t have a concrete answer for that. But I refuse to believe suspending the Constitution and the rule of law so we can snuff out Nazis—metaphorically or literally—is the actual answer.
Re: Re: Re:4 learn your history
The proles have to take what they need or they’ll get the piss taken out of them forever.
The idea that we must tolerate intolerance is a route to intolerance.
Bigotry is the one thing that should be mandated against. I don’t care if you call it facism or conservatism, it’s this discrimination that we have to fight against or it will win.
Fuck the coffee cup, why isn’t someone punching that facist in the face repeatedly?
Re: Re: Re:3
Throw Christians to the lions. All of them are child molesters dumb enough to believe in an imaginary sky friend.
The ones who agree with us will be martyrs willing to go. The ones who don’t will put up futile resistance.
Re: Re: Re:4
Let’s not give the NeoNazis more reasons to actually start demanding the Senate to roll back 1A and 2A.
Re: Re: Re: You ARE aware it works both ways, right?
That is a very dangerous idea. NOT because I’m sympathetic to Nazis. Far from it. However, the Constitution exists so that EVERYONE is included when we say, “Equal rights to all.” It would be very dangerous to change it to “Equal rights to all unless we dislike what you say.”
Look, I’m anti-Nazi, and I’m politically liberal. The Constitution exists so that if, heaven forbid, some Nazi assumes power, they can’t revoke people’s civil liberties from people like ME just because THEY don’t like what I have to say.
There’s no way to just eliminate Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties from “bad people”. The term “bad people” is very subjective, and what you might consider a “good person”, someone else could consider a “bad person”, and vice versa. What your proposing is an idea so dangerous, that it would eviscerate the guarantee of essential Constitutional rights. At that point, the Constitution becomes toothless.
As I said before, I’m politically liberal. I think what Josh Hawley is doing is stupid. But I don’t think this should be made into a copyright issue. What if it was a photo taken by a far-right news organization that a liberal politician was making a fair use out of to criticize that position? Would you be fine if that photographer sought legal action against that politician?
Fair use can’t have a political distinction between any particular political viewpoint. Fair use must apply to everyone equally, whether we like the idea being expressed or not. And that’s not even taking into account my own personal views on copyright law as a whole. If we’re going to have a copyright law, we can’t use it to suppress free speech, whether we like the content of the speech or not. That’s the larger issue that we can’t compromise on just because we don’t like certain people.
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You do realize, don’t you, that you are putting yourself in the category of “people for whom the Constitution is suspended”? Are you sure you want to do that?
Also, you might take another look at that “suspend the Constitution” proposal. Suspending the Constitution would cause all laws based on it (all federal laws in the country) to become invalid. Any rights and any responsibilities or limitations.
So no. “Not like that” I hear you say.
What you want is to selectively deny the protection of law to people you don’t like. There’s a name for that…
Re: Re: Re:2
People who don’t want Nazis to have the same rights as other people are not the same as Nazis. This is a false equivalency.
Re: Re: Re:3
Communists aren’t the same as Nazis either. What you have in common with the those two groups is that you apparently don’t believe in the US constitution.
Re: Re: Re:3
You’re literally calling for Nazis to have their civil rights cancelled out—something I’m pretty sure the Nazis themselves did back in their heyday. You appear to blame Nazis for the ills of your country—something the Nazis did to Jews to justify everything up to and including the Holocaust.
Maybe the comparison is a false equivalency. But it isn’t as false as you’d like us to think it is.
Re: Re: Re:4
“I want to stop these people who will commit genocide if they’re not stopped” is not the same thing as the people who want to commit genocide.
Your constant failing is that you keep looking at what I want to see happen rather than who I want it to happen to and what they want to see happen.
Me wanting Nazis to have their rights taken away from them is nowhere near the same as them committing genocide and killing millions of people, and wanting to do it again, only this time with American flavoring.
Re: Re: Re:5
Take away their rights and they could be assaulted or even murdered with impunity—by government actors, no less.
The Nazis didn’t start with the death camps. They started with pogroms like Kristallnacht. They started by taking away the civil rights and liberties of “undesirables”. What they did is what you’ve been calling for—and you expect us to buy into it only because Nazis are the living shitstain on the underwear of humanity.
I have no sympathies for Nazis; may they all rot in hell. But I refuse to believe suspending the rule of law for “undesirables” is a step worth taking. You can try to change my mind. But you’ll need a more persuasive argument than the one you’ve been putting forth today.
Re: Re: Re:5
Once you go down that road you’d best be absolutely sure to keep them from any sort of power because the second they gain any you’ll have already paved the road for them and set the precedent of stripping away rights because those in power don’t like the person/group.
Or as put in the play A Man for All Seasons, final emphasis mine…
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
Re: Re: Re:6
They’re already stripping away rights with the power they have.
This shit is ALREADY HAPPENING. The continued insistence on “You’re setting a precedent” rings hollow as these fucks are doing this shit right now without the permission slip.
If we play by the outdated rules while they don’t, and they win, and start putting more fascist bullshit in place that had no precedent than they already have, like they’ve been doing, are you going to still tell us we need to adhere to the rules and doing anything differently will just set more of this dreaded “precedent”?
Re: Re: Re:7
When your solution is to set the same precedent they want to set, you don’t have a solution—you have the same problem you’re railing against in a different set of clothes.
Re: Re: Re:8
Nazi Precedent: “Jews, minorities, and LGBTQ+ deserve to die”
The precedent I want to see: “Nazis do not deserve the same amount of rights as the people that they want to kill.”
Yeah, sure Exactly the same precedent.
Re: Re: Re:9
You literally advocated for the suspension of civil rights for Nazis. The Nazis literally did that shit to the Jews.
The precedent you want to say might have different aims than the Nazis; the way you want to set it looks damn similar to the way they set theirs.
Re: Re: Re:10
Jews are an ethnic & religious minority.
Nazis are a political faction
These are not equivalent.
Re: Re: Re:11
Jews are people, despite what the Nazis believed.
Nazis are people, despite what you want me to believe.
Wanting to unilaterally suspend the civil rights of a given group of people for any reason is fucked up.
Re: Re: Re:12
See also:
It’s only bad when THEY do it.
Re: Re: Re:11
And how does that makes the difference between one group of humans denying another group of human rights significant?
Re: Re: Re:10
Again you keep looking at what not why.
The Nazis committed genocide against the Jews, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and more because of their bigoted ideology.
I think that Nazis do not deserve the same rights as other people because, as proven back in WWII, and proven again over the last 6 years (and counting), this bigoted ideology has no place within a tolerant society and will destroy tolerant societies and attempts to build tolerant societies from within. Karl Popper’s Paradox Of Tolerance is more important than ever.
Also, before I go, I just wanted to say: Saying “Nazis are people, too!” makes you sound like some fash collaborator NPC from the modern Wolfenstein games. It’s a hilariously bad take, Stephen.
Re: Re: Re:11
The Nazis also thought they were doing a good thing when they stripped people of their civil rights for arbitrary reasons. Their path looks like the one you want to take, even if you think it’ll lead to a different ending.
But why stop at Nazis? Surely, avowed white supremacists represent another threat to the United States. Let’s go after them next! And hey, conservative Christian nationalists have been itching to turn this country into a real-life Gilead—how about we stop them before they get any further? And so it goes for the next group…and the next group…and there will always be an enemy. And what happens if one of those groups gets the exact kind of power you want, then decides you’re the “enemy”? What happens if someone who disagrees with you says you’re the “enemy” and your civil rights go out the fucking window?
The Nazis threw out the civil rights of the “undesirables” for the sake of making their extermination easier. You’re willing to toss out the entire fucking Constitution for the sake of stomping out Nazis (metaphorically and maybe even literally). Different endgame, same fucking warpath.
I can recognize that Nazis are people without buying into their ideology. To consider them all monsters—to think of them as subhuman—because of who they are or what they believe would make me no better than they were when they referred to Jews as “undesirables”.
Yes, their ideology is heinous. No, we don’t need a fucking dictatorship to fight it. And no, I won’t ever call for them to have all their civil rights stripped from them regardless of how much you want to goad me into doing that. You can’t make me do it, either—any attempt to shame, intimidate, or humiliate me into accepting your ideology will fail. You could put a gun to my head and I would still say “fuck you”.
In the end, I suspect you’d relish pulling that trigger. One less “Nazi sympathizer” to worry about, after all.
Re: Re: Re:7
What they are already doing is bad enough, now imagine what they would be able to get away with if any challenge to their efforts was not just an uphill battle but completely dead on arrival, if any legal challenge to their efforts to strip the rights of people/groups they don’t like had zero chance in court because they couldn’t violate rights that didn’t exist.
That’s what I meant when I said you have to be absolutely sure they garner no power once you go down the road of ‘People can have their rights removed at the whim of those in power’, the second something slips up and someone you don’t like gains that position you will have no protections whatsoever from whatever they want to do to you, and ‘But my rights are different’ isn’t going to help you.
Re: Re: Re:5
Allow me to quote Nietzsche for you:
(I realized the irony of quoting Nietzsche but blaming him for the Holocaust is like blaming Jesus of Nazareth for the inquisition: Their words may have inspired those who perpetrated those atrocities but the ultimate culpability is with those who actually did the acts, which are Adolf Hitler and Tomás de Torquemada)
Re: Re: Re:6
A monster that wants Nazis and only Nazis to face punishment for the shit they do and say is a pretty fuckin’ awesome monster, not gonna lie.
Re: Re: Re:6
That would be his sister, not Nietzche himself.
Re: Re: Re:3
They are doing the same to Nazis, as Nazis would do unto them. That means there is nothing to choose between them, as both side are treating the out group as sub-human, and without any rights.
Re: Re: Re:4
Except for, y’know, the fact that one side is actually Nazis.
Re: Re: Re:5
So what? They’re still people. Or do people not deserve their civil rights if and only if you believe they’re Nazis?
Re: Re: Re:6
Yes. My belief is that people who espouse Nazi ideology, the kind of ideology we saw on January 6 2021 that’s seeking to tear this country apart and turn it into a fascist theocracy, should not have the same rights as other people.
Re: Re: Re:7
And how far should that go? Should they be denied habeas corpus and jailed indefinitely?
Again: You may have different aims than the Nazis, but the road you want us to travel down looks awfully familiar to theirs.
Re: Re: Re:7
You think taking rights away from these people are going to make them stop trying to take over the country — rather than turn them into martyrs who can now justify how you are stripping them of their rights?
I mean, holy shit, have you no sense of history at all? Your plan is dangerous authoritarian nonsense.
Re: Re: Re:6
Stop being Nazis and things automatically become better. People who advocate the literal ethnic cleansing of others should not be given carte blanche to continue advocating for ethnic cleansing.
Re: Re: Re:7
But people who advocate a political cleaning should? Other than who is cleansed, there is no difference in outcomes.
Re: Re: Re:5
And nether side will respect the rights of anybody who disagrees with them. Does it matter who decides who goes to the re-education camps, when that is the fate of anybody that does not agree with either of those extremes.
Re: Re: Re:3
As a member of one of the groups targeted by Hitler’s policies (disabled people), I’m struggling to see the false equivalency. Taking civil rights away from people deemed to be Nazis is exactly the same as the Nazi party taking civil rights away from the 15 million people they deemed to be undesirable for whatever reason.
Re: Re: Re:
“The events of the last 6 years, longer than that if we go back to the GamerGate bullshit, shows that they shouldn’t.”
The issue isn’t that nazis shouldn’t have the same rights everyone else should have. The issue is that private entities are choosing to tacitly support those nazis in ways which are ill-advised.
Government can’t condemn nazis for their opinion, no matter how repugnant. Private entities, however, are and have always been free to tell the nazi to fuck right off from the places they gather. Yet too few do this, because they’ve gotten stuck in the “both sides” bullshit and may by now believe that the opinions of a raging bigot holds equal weight to the opinion of a humanitarian.
That said, some countries have implemented laws against outright hate speech. That does appear to work and though I’m still on the fence on which the least bad option is, There is a case to be made that just as people have rights to their opinion, a minority group in vulnerable position should not have to suffer skinheads shouting racial slurs targeting them in the streets.
The public space, after all, exists for everyone. It isn’t acceptable to hand the dominion of which over to the loudest hecklers.
In the US, however, where banning hate speech in the public space is impossible and undesirable, the issue is that the Very Fine People have been allowed entry in far too many private establishments and it’s time to purge the rolls and set up sensible rules of behavior and blacklists.
Re:
And when the Nazis turn that around on you and say that they should use copyright and other tools to stop “leftists” from making money, using your own words…?
Re: Re:
Why are you listening to the Nazis?
Re: Re: Re:
They’re not. They’re saying that if the Nazis gain power again (or, at least, their sympathisers), you just handed the tools to them to attack decent people.
Trump was a failed fascist despite his talk about “fine people”, the next one might not be so incompetent.
Re:
If you are happy to remove someone’s rights based on their political viewpoint, then you are equally happy to have someone else remove your rights based on your political views. If not, you don’t want a democracy, you want a dictatorship with you in charge.
Copyright is a literal monopoly on who can write a given set of words. As soon as you start using it for more that the very limited purpose it has in the constitution, your copyright law starts to violate the first amendment.
Re: Re:
Or maybe it means that I want a democracy where Nazis and their bullshit don’t have equal weight and validity ascribed to their beliefs that everyone that’s not a straight white person should die. Other countries have hate speech laws and more that prevent Nazis from building up societal and political capital. They have not descended into dictatorships. This isn’t rocket science to understand.
Re: Re: Re:
The United States has the First Amendment. Unless you’re willing to trash that—and every legal protection arising from it—for the sake of silencing Nazis, you’re gonna need a better argument than that.
Re:
While I don’t agree with the choice of tools or implementation, it certainly presents an interesting dilemma…
At what point does being tolerant of those who are not, lead to the demise of those who are tolerant? (AKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
Re:
You’re misidentifying the problem here.
Nazis should be prosecuted for the crimes they commit. Not deprived of their rights in general. That’s due process and every criminal is entitled to it, because if they’re not, then you are not entitled to it either.
Your approach is to go after a murderer by saying “we can’t prove you’re a murderer and sue you for it, but since you are eating pizza with pineapple and this kind of people don’t deserve human rights, we’re just going to lynch you instead.”
Nothing wrong with that at all.
Re: Re:
(Also, if police won’t go after said murderer because he lacks melanin or has barbecue parties with cops, you’ve got a whole other problem to address.)
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Are the left still railing about the mostly-peaceful protest on January 6th?
You know, the January 6th mostly-peaceful protest where the Capitol police open the doors and allowed people to enter freely?
That January 6th mostly-peaceful protest.
Re:
Can’t tell if serious or sarcastic, take your funny vote either way I guess.
Re:
Are the left still railing about the mostly-peaceful protest on January 6th?
Nope. Just laughing at all the folks sitting in jail (or having their livelihoods decimated) for their actions on that day.
It’s funny as hell and such a fitting end to such an ignorant group.
Re:
“Are the left still railing about the mostly-peaceful protest on January 6th?”
Yes. Largely because the ridiculous spin that you swallowed – and would not be even remotely entertained had it been a BLM / Democrat / whatever protest if Biden had lost – is not something that most people even outside of the eft believe.
Heck naw
Not fair use. Not transformative. And he’s selling them, so he is using it commercially in a way that he should have licensed, or not used if he could not obtain a license.
The photo on the mug is not transformative the way Shepard Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster is – in that case it is the artwork that transformed and made the image iconic in a way that should have been fair use. But in the photo on the mug, the photo is iconic, and Hawly is using it for commercial purposes without significant transformation in a way that is not fair use.
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The post describes how it is fair use, and transformative. With apologies to Monty Python, simple denial is not an argument. You will need to prove your thesis.
You must be new here, not to have seen the many, many posts describing how commercial use is not a fixed barrier to fair use. Please do a little more reading, and update your argument.
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Exactly. It’s not fair use. He’s just ripping the photo and pasting it on his merch. He’s like a hack at a state fair selling bootleg Minecraft or Fotrnite shirts, only he’s using the money to fund his election campaign so he can keep spreading Nazi views with as huge a platform as possible.
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Ironically enough, you can sell copyrighted works under the fair use doctrine.
For some interesting reading on how the courts have ruled for fair use, check out the index of fair use cases and read through the some of the decisions where fair use was found.
There is a specific test the courts use to determine fair use (Title 17 Ch 1 §107):
Re: Re: Re: Still not fair use.
I mentioned that he’s selling them as one of the 4 factors, not the only one. His use isn’t transformative. “Putting a photo on a mug” is an ordinary use of the image that requires licensing.
However, Fair Use is an affirmative defense, and only a lawsuit and a trial can determine whether any specific instance qualifies. So even though I say it’s not Fair Use and Mike says it is, neither of us are right until a court says so.
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“Transformative use” can mean changing the image itself, but that’s not the only possible meaning. Using the same image in a different context, targeting a different market, purpose, and audience, can also be transformative. There’s not really any reasonable argument that Hawley is competing with the Associated Press.
Certainly not fair use
Hawley could easily hire someone to take a photo of himself in that same pose, and use that photo. He has no need to use a copy of the photo taken by someone else.
The photographer is entitled to license the use or withhold a license, and he is entitled to be paid for the license if he gives one.
I would even be with Higbee in a case like this.
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That doesn’t make it not fair use. “No need” isn’t one of the four factors.
“because they own a copyright on a photograph they took of him without his permission”
Uhhh something something in public no expectation of privacy.
He is a shitbag, but I really can’t see how putting the image on a mug is that transformative… but maybe it is.
Considering how for DECADES the copyright cartels have claimed that even a snippet or brief flash of a copy protected image is an affront to god, its only okay when its not touching politics?
Copyright is a peachy way to shut people up, hell most of the time there isn’t even something copyrighted when it happens. But when a shitbag takes an image & profits from it one has to wonder if thats right.
But then his hero lifted most of the offical white house photographers photos after demanding a cut of her book deal advance & then released his own book where they almost remembered to credit those who took the photos.
We’ve seen ‘regular’ people facing life shattering damages in court of claims of having downloaded a movie, but if they put it through a filter to comment on it makes it fair use for them to then sell to others?
Sounds stupid to me…
Are you sure about this?
I’m pretty sure if I write a poem and someone steals it and then shares it on, it’s copyright infringement whether I or they had any commercial intent. Likewise, if I write a piece of software for my own personal use, and someone copies it and uses it for their own purposes, it’s copyright infringement no matter whether I or they sought to profit off the software.
Commercial speech helps to weight arguments for fair use, but it is not itself a requirement for copyright (public domain works are used for commercial purposes all the time) nor is non-commercial speech de-facto fair use.
The core here, I think is “does Hawley’s use contsitute fair use?” to which I think the answer is an unpleasant “yes.”
The secondary consideration is: “does someone who publishes their copyrighted work through a compulsory license lose all control of it?” The answer here is… murky. Compulsory licenses have strict limitations on use, and any copyright owner has the right to use or not use a compulsory license, or change which license they use at any time, because they hold the copyright.
Think about the countless times that recording artists have refused to grant a political party the right to use their songs. And think about the recent recording artists who pulled their songs from Spotify to protest Spotify’s amplification of anti-vax and racist material on their platform.
The goal of constitutions like the one in the USA is one set of rules for everyone. Even when those rules are extremely complicated, we should be very careful about advocating for different rules for different people based on anything but their actions.
If we don’t want nazis using copyrighted material, we need to make something the nazis are doing illegal for EVERYONE. Otherwise, you get things like Russia calling other ethnicities nazis and going full-fascist, under laws meant to protect people from fascism.
“Josh Hawley sucks.”
I know he does, and I’ve seen exactly what he likes to suck, too. /jk
Re: You're hurting LBGT+ with your rhetoric
http://www.newnownext.com/not-everyone-antigay-is-secretly-gay/08/2019/
The consensus (of pro-gay advocates) is you’re not supposed to do this anymore.
It’s the 21st Century, Autie.
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It might not be PC or whatever to speculate on such things, but there’s a long history of the most vehemently anti-gay activists being caught with rent boys, etc. When someone is so obsessively hateful, it invites speculation on why they are that way, and one possibility is that they’re overcompensating for something.
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Right. Just like jokes about taking it up the butt are anti-gay, notwithstanding the many millions of straight men who enjoy a woman massaging their prostate with a vegetable or a strap-on dildo. Q-/
How can it be “fair use” if it’s being sold to generate revenue and profit? Are there any cases that state candidates can use copyrighted material in political ads or to make money?
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“How can it be “fair use” if it’s being sold to generate revenue and profit?”
My understanding is that there’s various aspects to fair use that are fundamental to many aspects of speech. For example, if Colbert plays a clip of Fox to demonstrate that they’re lying, he’s allowed to do that without asking Fox for permission because it falls under fair use. If he had to ask, he wouldn’t be able to inform his audience of the lie. Yet, he and his network get paid by advertisers for running the show.
It gets quite muddy morally when someone uses work by someone completely against the usage gets to claim the same fair use rights, but there is often a difference between the spirit and application of the law.
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And then there are all the rulings in the TVEye lawsuits from Faux that make it an even bigger mess.
shame that Hawley doesn’t like it when others with different opinions, try to state them!
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“Josh Hawley … Still Gets Fair Use Rights”
What the hell is going on at Techdirt? I haven’t read the story yet, and I’m sure it spends a lot more time on the “Senator Hawley is an awful no-good very bad Nazi racist bad guy white supremacizer genocider anti-Semitic terrible literal Hitler” than on the “Guy with whom I disagree politically has some basic rights in the USA that we shouldn’t blatantly violate”, but the headline alone is shocking for Techdirt.
I don’t see this Brian Frye chap being invited back.