Jason Crow's blog

A recent post on Prawfs Blawg by Professor Howard Wasserman further explores some of the questions raised in my post, Searching for Both Sides of Body Slam Video, where I discuss some of the problems with videos that document forceful arrests. Prof. Wasserman's post profiles a video depicting someone being forcibly removed from a press conference by Dino Rossi, the state of Washington GOP gubernatorial candidate, and a discussion of his recent paper, "Orwells Vision: Video and the Future of Civil Rights Enforcement," that provides an analysis of the constitutional and civil rights that videos like this one may be protecting.

The video is strikingly similar to the videos I describe in my previous post on the subject: a seemingly innocent person gets forcibly dragged out of a room while a handheld video camera captures everything. The people doing the removing look fairly unreasonable and person being removed looks like a victim. Yet, similar to the videos that capture the arrests of the bicycle riders, we don't get the whole story. We can only discern from the video that the videographer may have been asked to leave the premises and told he was trespassing on private property.    read more »

A tourist captured video of a New York City police officer body slamming a bicycle rider who was participating in a group ride through Times Square. The video posted on YouTube depicts the incident in a way that is inconsistent with the series of events described in the police officer's criminal complaint.

The bicycle rider, Christopher Long, was taking part in a monthly group ride with dozens of other riders called Critical Mass that draws attention to issues that concern bicycle riders in urban centers such as car traffic congestion and poor street layout for riders.

The criminal complaint filed by Officer Patrick Pogan states that Mr. Long “drove” his bicycle straight into him, causing Mr. Pogan's body “to fall to the ground” and “suffer lacerations" on his arms. The complaint, charging Mr. Long with attempted assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct, alleged that he "kicked his legs" and "flailed his arms" while stating, "You are pawns in the game, I will have your job."

In comparison, the video shows the officer taking a few steps towards Mr. Long’s oncoming bicycle. Mr. Long appears to try to dodge the approaching officer, but the officer quickens his pace, lowers his shoulder, and shoves him to the curb. Before we see him get handcuffed, the video cuts to a slow-motion version of the body slam.   read more »

Imagine the following hypothetical: I've joined forces with a few friends and some Internet affiliates (you know, the folks you meet at conferences) to build what we now call a "team blog." The website aims at building a web community of video producers and community TV stations looking to share broadcast quality video. At first, we did it for the love, hacking together code, creating buzz for the service -- there were no real legal or business issues to complicate matters. However, when interest in the website grew, and organizations and government bodies started to show interest in using the service, problems grew like dandelions in a unkempt field. We had copyright issues concerning the video content, profit-sharing issues based on who contributed most to the code development, governance and decision-making issues, and trouble entering into contracts on behalf of the group. We needed to formalize our relationship, but didn't know where to begin. Should we be a non-profit, LLC, or a corporation?  read more »

In Malibu City, an ocean-side enclave of Los Angeles, local government officials are considering regulations that aim to protect the privacy and safety interests of both celebrities hounded by the paparazzi and local residents, after local surfers went to fisticuffs with photographers trying to capture Matthew McConaughey surfing at Malibu's Little Dume Beach.

According to the Malibu Times, some Malibu City Council members are considering a range of possibilities including buffer zones around certain areas, requiring all "celebrity photographers" to file for a permit, and taxing revenues generated from the photos. Malibu Councilman Jefferson Wagner supports the idea of a licensing requirement for paparazzi because of what he considers the commercial nature of the photographs. Earlier this year, Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine proposed creating a "personal safety zone" that would require paparazzi to stay several feet away from the celebrities they photograph.

At first blush, the proposed regulations seem like a well-reasoned response to a problem that has plagued the area for some time. With the demand for candid images of celebrities at an all-time high in part due to highly popular entertainment blogs like Perez Hilton, who is sued frequently over his use of celebrity pics (see CMLP’s summaries here, here, and here), finding a way to wrangle the unruly photographers is a topic that isn't likely to go away.   read more »

A bill pending in the New York Legislature would allow the public to photograph, videotape, and audio record public meetings in New York, providing better access to government deliberations and information. It would impose two minor conditions: the photographing or recording activity must not be disruptive, and the public body holding the meeting can regulate where equipment and personnel are located in the room. The bill is an amendment to section 103 of the New York Open Meetings Law, which gives the public a right of access to the meetings of a large number of government bodies at the state and local level. 

Judicial decisions in New York have already indicated that the public may use unobtrusive recording devices in public meetings and have influenced Missouri and North Dakota to provide the same recording right. In Mitchell v. Board of Education of Garden City Union Free School District, 113 A.D.2d 924 (N.Y. App. Div. 1985), the court reasoned that allowing the public to use recording devices at public meetings may provide a better way to document what transpires at the meetings than merely using pen and paper. The court expressed that

[a] contemporaneous recording of a public meeting is undoubtedly a more reliable, accurate and efficient means of memorializing what is said at the proceeding. Once the information and comments are conveyed to the public, it should be of no consequence that they may subsequently be repeated, by means of replay, to those who were unable to attend.   read more »

“Laws are like sausages. You should never watch them being made.” This adage, generally attributed to Otto von Bismarck, rings true to anyone who has had the opportunity to watch Congress make public policy. Just tune into C-SPAN sometime for a taste.

Across the pond in England, a website, TheyWorkForYou.com (TWFY), aims to change this by offering a new service that allows users to watch archived BBC coverage of parliamentary debates and tag the video.

The tagging solves a big problem: there is currently no way to search the video to find the speaker or topic you are interested in. TWFY is crowdsourcing the work, allowing visitors to mark the moment in the video when a speaker begins by pressing a big red button. They call this activity "time-stamping" and provide incentives to compete with others by displaying the names of the top time-stampers and giving away promotional hoodies to the top time-stampers. The time-stamping synchronizes the video with the transcript and makes the video much more useful by allowing users to search the video according to their interests.   read more »

Last week some reporters, politicos, and bloggers may have mourned the end of the endless presidential primary season. But it's not like political mudslinging is now going to end. Indeed, in ancticipation of the focus on the general election battle, in the muddy backwaters of the Internet – in forums, blog comments, email chain letters and listservs – defamatory statements are being bandied about in hopes that some of the reputation damaging misinformation will enter the zeitgeist of the electorate to sway public opinion about the candidates one way or another.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported on the trend, noting that Snopes.com and PolitiFact.com have not only been tracking the smear campaigns against the presumptive nominees but also determining the veracity of the claims. Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, similarly analyzes the veracity of statements made by parties or campaigns themselves. So as to not add to the clutter of misinformation on the web, I’ll let you find some of the best calumny that have been floated around the web yourself.

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe in his article Drive-by Defamation suggests this kind of mudslinging has been going on since the founding. He writes that
  read more »