Newark Cameraman assaulted by police is suing.

In general, I don’t do cartwheels when I hear about lawsuits. But this one makes me happy. A TV photographer in New Jersey has filed a lawsuit against a police officer who arrested him while the photographer was filming a peaceful demonstration. Apparently the only thing violent about this demonstration was the officer’s clash with the photographer.

This video shows the original event. Can you say “settle now.”

Dear Police of America: Stop violating the constitutional rights of journalists. We are journalists and we will get really good evidence.

It’s photo week at the Supreme Court of the United States

Photographers should be paying attention to the Supreme Court this week…

Tasini continued…

Oral arguments were heard today in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. This case is connected to our old friend Tasini v. New York Times, which some say started the whole rights grabbing trends of the modern day newspaper contract. While this case won’t really have as much of an impact on photographers, it is interesting because of the connection. It involves the authority of the court over copyright cases and settlements when the rights holders haven’t registered their copyright. It also involves an enormous class of journalists. Here is a summary of the oral arguments (note to self: research why people keep hyphenating “freelancer”) and here is a transcript of the oral arguments.

If the court rules that a federal court cannot approve a settlement involving rights-holders who have not registered, it seems inevitable that this will affect the Google Books settlement.

The Dog-fight Video Case

In another case that is important to photographers, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday about whether or not a law that bans visual depictions of cruelty to animals is a violation of the First Amendment.

U.S. v. Stevens is the first case ever to be prosecuted under a federal law that bans any “depiction of animal cruelty” if such cruelty is illegal in the place where the depiction is created, sold or possessed.

It has been many years since the Court found that the government interest in preventing child pornography was so great that it overrode any First Amendment rights of the child pornographer, a rather appropriate finding. By making the expressive act illegal, the motive for the abuse is diminished. Child pornography involves abuse of a child and the photography itself is abusive. The law is clearly narrowly tailored and serves a compelling government interest.

This law is not so well orchestrated. For example, the defedant, Stevens, was not involved in any animal abuse, he merely edited together footage that he obtained from others.

While well intentioned (many attacks on the First Amendment are), I think this law is certain to be struck down. First of all, I don’t believe that our government truly has a compelling interest in preventing cruelty to animals. If it did, much of the way our nation produces meat would be illegal (yes, I am a vegetarian). Second, the law is in no way narrowly tailored. There are many possibilities of perfectly legal activity that could get a person caught up in this law. And there are loopholes that would make illegal a video or photograph of something that was legal where it occurred (say bullfighting in Spain). I once photographed a ritual sacrifice of a sea turtle in a Fijian village. It was gross. It was brutal and cruel. But it was important to document. Those pictures could get me in trouble with the feds under this law.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the list of hypotheticals the justices posed to the attorneys in this case. The article in the New York Times says it all.

The transcript, full of hypotheticals, is here.

An article about the NPPA signing an amicus brief urging the court to hold the law unconstitutional is here.

One of my favorite things to listen to is a Nina Totenberg report on Supreme Court arguments. Her review of this weeks oral arguments is available here.

Colbert on NPPA and Photography in Train Stations

For years, I have been involved in fighting attempts to ban photography in public places like train stations. Yet photographers continue to be harassed and we continue to have to make a fuss.

Recently, a case caught the attention of the Colbert Report and the following video ran last night (Feb. 2). The absurdity of our point comes across clear as day. The shout out to NPPA (and the bloody lettering to go with it) made my day.

The good news is that NPPA has gotten Amtrak to agree to review and update its police guidelines in regards to photography. But that, of course is not as funny as what happened to set it all off.

more about “Colbert Reports on Photography in Tra…“, posted with vodpod

Notes from the Lame Duck Session

A couple of interesting things happened in Lameducklandia today.

- Approval of the auto bailout. Booo.

- Condemnation of the Mumbai attacks. Duh. Would people have thought otherwise?

- Extension of the broadcast authority timeline (related to the digital tv transition)

- S.J. Resolution 46 ensures that the Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) will have the compensation that was in effect on Jan. 1, 2007. I assume this is an attempt to get around the constitutional problem of having her serve in an appointed position for which she voted on a raise. I’m not sure that it solves the problem, technically, but it does address the spirit of the problem

“No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time…” (emoluments being salary/ compensation)

This is not the first time this conflict has come up. And it has been ignored before, or rather, dealt with by reverting to the pre-raise salary.

But the fact of the matter is that the Constitution doesn’t have the words, “unless they do x,y,z….”

The congress may be trying to solve this problem by legislating, however you can’t leglislate your way out of the constitution.

But I told my husband that I had one solution… that it doesn’t apply to Clinton because the constitutional clause clearly says, “he”. I wonder if that would work. ;o)

A post on the Daily Kos explains the whole dilemma very well.

Ironically, it is only a $4,000 raise, surely chump change for someone like Clinton, especially considering that she had her eyes on a different job.

And then again, it is only the Constitution. Seems like the judiciary is the only branch of the government that is even pretending to follow it these days anyhow (and frankly even they abandon it when it suits them).