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Great Judy Feder Quote
By Greg L | 2 August 2006 | Humor & Satire, US Congress | 19 Comments
Judy Feder, the Democratic Nominee for the 10th Congressional District, favorite Virginia candidate of Maryland and the District of Columbia, and possibly the most bizarre candidate we’ve seen in a long time, has been busy speaking on all sorts of topics over the past few years. And fortunately, some people had the precience to record these pearls of wisdom.
Heard related to me tonight: When Judy Feder was asked about how to pay for the high cost of the healthcare package she was pushing as part of the Clinton administration, her response was “My plea is tax me now.”
Oh yeah, that’s just what the voters want to hear these days.
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19 Comments
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I don’t believe I gave you permission to use that image. Please remove it.
Ha, hah. The photo on Judy Feder’s flickr site is marked
“© This photo is public.
Uploaded on Jul 27, 2006
See for yourself at http://flickr.com/photos/judyfederforcongress , and yes, I checked!
it’s public as in anyone can view it. If you click on the picture, you will see it’s copyrighted. It’s my photo, I gave the Feder campaign use. I did not give you rights to use it. It is not fair use.
How horrible, tax me now. She should show true courage, like George Bush, and pass the bill for all her ideas onto our children. Now that is leadership.
[Ed Note: comment edited to remove objectionable content]
It occurs to me that I have been posting anon. Sorry about that.
Greg,
Assuming you’re the person making demands, I believe this does fit the definition of fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107. I also question whether you have legal ownership of the material in question. Should you believe that you have the legal authority to make such demands, I would request that your counsel send a formal cease and desist request to me at the following address:
BVBL
Attn: Greg L
9702 Dublin Drive
Manassas, VA 20109
I would have included a pithy trademark comment, but I have more respect for you than that.
“Fair use” is defined below by Wikipedia and the government. You don’t give the courtesy of saying which definition you are using, but if you know you’re violating copyright, it seems churlish to throw down the gauntlet and threaten to continue until someone makes you do the right thing.
“Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_under_United_States_law
[A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. On the other hand, it is as clear, that if he thus cites THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTS of the work, with a view, not to criticise, but TO SUPERSEDE the use of the original work, and substitute the review for it, such a use will be deemed in law a piracy….
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research [comment - this is for the WORK, in this case, the photo, not the SUBJECT of the photo].
Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.
The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”
Copyright protects the particular way an author has expressed himself; it does not extend to any ideas, systems, or factual information conveyed in the work.
The safest course is always to get permission from the copyright owner before using copyrighted material. The Copyright Office cannot give this permission.
When it is impracticable to obtain permission, use of copyrighted material should be avoided unless the doctrine of “fair use” would clearly apply to the situation. The Copyright Office can neither determine if a certain use may be considered “fair” nor advise on possible copyright violations. If there is any doubt, it is advisable to consult an attorney.
FL-102, Revised July 2006
Pretty soon, I’m going to start responding with the BVBL trademark response to ridiculous legal threats here. You’re begging for it…
The acid test, Greg, is whether they actually take legal action….
Oops! Didn’t mean to rub salt.
I don’t think Frank has cheated on his wife the way Tom Davis did.
Frank is a little wierd though.
I hear he wants to be buried on his private million dollar estate.
Ask him.
Jim, I take no offense at all. By the way, thanks for the compliment you paid earlier.
Oh, so if a lefty blog obtains a photo, has a little fun with it for the purpose of “political satire”, (and I do think we have seen enumerous examples of that) all is fair in politics, love, war (well unless if you are on criticizing the Bush Administration).
Give it a break.
God forbid Judy Feder discuss policies such as fiscal responsibility and taxation now as a savings later AS DEAN OF THE GEORGETOWN PUBLIC POLICY SCHOOL.
Set aside the law for a moment. It’s just plain rude to use somebody’s photograph without their permission. Some people specify in advance that others are free to reproduce those photos (such as releasing the images under the Open Content License), but lacking that, would it kill you to say “please” or, at this point, “I’m sorry”?
Is that the same tiger outfit she wore a while back?
Waldo,
This came from a site that is part of Feder’s official campaign. What am I supposed to do, write Judy and ask if she minds whether I create parodies based on the content of her campaign website? This is pretty silly.
Now if I managed to dig up somebody’s personal MySpace site or something, and wanted to use one of their pictures from there, I could see your point and the wisdom of an apology. That’s not the case here. If this bizarre candidate posts really bizarre pictures of herself on her campaign website, she’s just begging for someone to make use of them. If you’re going to be upset at anyone, blame her campaign manager for this whopper of a failure to effectively exercize oversight.
Tony the Tiger for Congress? I don’t think so.
Greg:
I bet if you published a photo of yourself, and then it got photo shopped to have a dog “raising its leg” on your shoe… that would be all “fun and games”.
I see the copy right issue more for sites like Istock Photo, where I do purchase many of the graphics I use on STD. Now, if ya’ll lift that and do something with it, I would expect trouble, (from Istock).
But if a candidate puts out a photo, and obviously is not expecting to make a profit from the photo, just looking for the photo to be further linked to and posted to further the campaign it seems to me the candidate’s cause is being furthered.
Now as for the satire, if it is done in very poor taste, that can help the canididate also with the “victim factor”.
As a matter of fact BVBL is attracting quite a bit of attention, by having these “big shot” attorneys all over the Blogs case. They are “Building Your Fame”…. furthering your cause by “bringing more eyeballs” to your opinions…. You’re not making all this stuff up are you?
It’s kind of amazing to me that there’s so much interest in me personally. I’m not that interesting, and I don’t have pretentions that this blog is all that important. Most people in the district, unless they’re political junkies have never heard of this site, and the MJM coverage hasn’t really changed that very much. Now if something other than a little local paper covers this, maybe that’ll change, but I can’t see them wasting ink on me.
It really doesn’t matter much to me whether I get attention or not, at least unless it happens to embarrass someone to drop a lawsuit or something. Regardless of the publicity, what drives interest is the content and I’d rather focus on content than what result that content may cause.
Anyone can see that the photo is a parody. However, if the Greg’s want to litigate this case and spend thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, and waste a year or two, I would be delighted to represent either one of you, provided you pay my retainer up front