
Dad who live-streamed his son’s birth on Facebook loses in court - morehuman
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/dad-who-live-streamed-his-sons-birth-on-facebook-loses-in-court/
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dec0dedab0de
Good to see a win for fair use. Don't broadcast publicly if you dont want it
to be public.

~~~
Nadya
_> Don't broadcast publicly if you dont want it to be public._

Ah, to live in the 90's again. I remember when the motto was _" Don't share
anything on the internet that you don't want to be public."_

~~~
ashark
Yeah, and especially "don't ever, _ever_ put your real name, phone number, or
location into ANY online system".

It was the way to preserve the benefits of anonymity and free speech without
opening the door to (much) serious abuse. Then people realized they could make
money promoting their "personal brand" online, and companies realized they
could get people to tell them everything about themselves and sell that data,
so common-sense behavior that permitted a very free environment to thrive with
few negative externalities was destroyed by the profit motive and... here we
are.

~~~
M_Grey
Some of us still hold to those basic protective measures. I see it as the
difference between using ATM's, and walking all the way home while flashing
your cash at everyone who walks by.

~~~
Nadya
I practice psuedonomity instead of anonymity. "Nadya Nayme" is just a play on
"Not a name". It allows me to have an identity while speaking my mind and
hiding my real self from the general population. I don't think anonymity
against a state power is realistic, so I don't consider it a part of my threat
model. Twitter users organizing to harass my employer into firing me is much
higher on my list of concerns. Especially because I've had people threaten
"they would if they could."

Some people still value privacy. But most only value privacy when it is
convenient - and are willing to throw it away for more convenience.

~~~
AndyNemmity
I do the same thing. No one ever seems to pick up the play, so in a way I've
developed a second full name that works reasonable well.

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npizzolato
> Apparently, the father-to-be realised his film was streaming publicly on
> social media about 30 minutes into recording, but decided to leave it that
> way.

It would be one thing if he never realized he was broadcasting publicly. Once
you realize something is public and decide to leave it up, I think you lose
any moral authority to claim others shouldn't have any fair use claim to your
public work.

~~~
anigbrowl
I disagree. Here's a moral (not legal) argument: he was streaming something
for free to share with friends and family, and decided that he was OK to share
it with interested parties that were interested to witness a live birth.

ABC is a corporate entity that exploited the footage for purely commercial
purposes, as a way to attract attention to their news broadcast so they could
sell advertising in the middle. This is a fundamentally different purpose from
sharing it freely, and seeks to privatize what was previously given away
unselfishly.

I'm not going to spend time looking up individual cases now, but I can think
of several examples of big media companies suing over equivalently short
excerpts of their broadcast product were used by someone else, eg that time
Fox demanded the producers of a documentary fork over some $$$ because one of
the interviews took place in a room where a TV was displaying an episode of
_The simpsons_ in the background of the shot.

So the moral argument rests on the vast disparity in wealth between the two
entities. An individual human of modest wealth shared something freely in a
spirit of generosity, and a aggregate entity of vast wealth exploited it for
its commercial value but selfishly kept all the benefit to itself, callously
ignoring the financial burden to the parents that typically entails upon
childbirth. A firm run on more moral principles would have split the proceeds
of the commercial activity with the creators.

~~~
icebraining
Large media companies are not very ethical; news at 11. How is that relevant
to whether he should have a claim on it?

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, equity used to be a concern of courts and was important enough to be
mentioned in article III.

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pjc50
It's become common practice for news organisations to just lift video and
pictures from people's social media without permission, attribution or
payment.

Perhaps an effective technique against this is to make sure there's
copyrighted music playing in your livestream. (Or does that get auto-killed by
content watermarking?)

~~~
amelius
And I have the feeling that if you would use public content from said news
organizations without permission, things would turn out rather differently.

~~~
djrogers
I dunno - youtube is filled with clips from newscasts...

~~~
xenihn
Is the content featuring those clips actually being monetized by the
uploaders?

~~~
ThatGeoGuy
Yes, there are numerous examples of "news channels" on Youtube which report on
things that more mainstream sources have said or reported on already. Some
examples would be Philip DeFranco, Scarce, etc.

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6stringmerc
> _This week’s ruling can therefore be taken to mean that if you use social
> media in a newsworthy way, it could be seized and shared, however personal
> the content._

Good. This isn't a terribly high bar to clear, and it's directly related to
public sharing / public performance type issues. Not even close to violating
privacy rights like with a mistaken email forward - this was done by the
person, intentional or unintentional, they opened it up.

I'm glad to see Copyright still have merit in the court system when the case
being brought - this one - clearly doesn't meet the standards for the purpose
and intent of the law. Ex-post-facto-cash-grab still not strong legal
strategy.

------
jakobegger
The last paragraph mentions that apparently child protective services took the
baby after a day because the father was alleged to have a history of domestic
violence.

I was shocked when I read that. Does that actually happen? Is it common in the
US that the authorities take newborn babies from their mother?

~~~
DanBC
Remember that infanticide is a leading cause of death of infants, and
accidental injury is another.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Protective_Services#Chil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Protective_Services#Child_Protective_Services_statistics)

> On September 30, 2010, there were approximately 400,000 children in foster
> care in the U.S. of which 36% percent were ages 5 and under. During that
> same period, almost 120,000 birth to five year-olds entered foster care and
> a little under 100,000 exited foster care.[41]

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ahassan
So they're mad that the stream they shared publicly was seen by the public?...

~~~
rhizome
Read the article: CPS took their baby away.

~~~
cr0sh
If you read the comments below the article, the reason CPS was called was
because someone recognised the couple from an earlier case. In 2015, they both
were apparently arrested after blowing up a shed in their backyard while
attempting to make "honey oil" (hash oil made using a solvent, typically
butane or propane). Dome's kids (at the time) were taken away by CPS after the
incident. Both Dome and her (now) baby-daddy were arrested, along with some
other person.

~~~
rhizome
Sure, but my point is that it's more complicated than "mad because FB streamed
the thing they were streaming."

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danieltillett
Am I the only one that thinks that taking a baby away from their mother one
day after birth because of a domestic violence accusation by a third party
against the father (and denied by him) is over the top?

~~~
DanBC
That might be over the top. Does the US publish these court cases? It would be
interesting to see what the case actually is.

Don't forget that infanticide is a leading cause of death of children under
one Accidental death is another, and some of those are because the parents
need help and support.

~~~
danieltillett
We have a situation where a third party has made an accusation of domestic
violence, nobody has yet been convicted, the father denies it, and CPS takes
one day to take the baby away from its mother? I would hope it would take more
than an accusation from a potentially disgruntled ex-partner to cause this
trauma on a mother and a baby.

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partycoder
In the Facebook terms of use it says:

"you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free,
worldwide license to use any IP content that you post"

...in addition to:

"When you publish content or information using the Public setting, it means
that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access
and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and
profile picture)."

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nicholasjarnold
This story shouldn't surprise anyone here, but I can understand that the
general public doesn't fully understand the implications of using a free
platform to host/display their private information.

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kapauldo
That's gross and egotistical. For events like birth, privacy is what makes
them special. Too much vanity in social media.

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sciurus
Could we change the link to a better article, like
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/dad-who-live-
str...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/dad-who-live-streamed-his-
sons-birth-on-facebook-loses-in-court/) ?

The article on thememo.com leaves out key information, such as the fact that
ABC broadcast only 22 seconds of the 45 minute video.

~~~
swsieber
The linked article also leaves out the fact that somebody recognized the
mother and called CPS on him (for her history of domestic violence), while the
Ars one includes it.

It gives a different view to the incident.

Edit: Recognized the mother, not the father.

~~~
Avenger42
Actually, they recognized the father, it seems:

> Someone from a past relationship had recognized Kanongataa on Facebook and
> reported to CPS that he had domestic violence allegations against him.
> Kanongataa denies those allegations.

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