Rabble, Rabble, Rabble!

Sometimes I wish I never woke up.

[mvparikh-blog]

The F#@*ing Elephants

Let us assume the good and evil that exists is all within us. 

That makes it much easier to deal with elements in DC politics that are negative, dishonest and downright despicable. 

George Carlo had a notorious reputation for dirty politics; anonymous whispering campaigns seem to have made their way around the "RF world", deeming him beyond the usual "attorney-type" or "fringe kook". Those are acceptable in this bizzaro-world. 

KK and I are optimists. Or as we've been called several times already, naive. We believe in a collective consciousness and prefer to go against the norm, and not focus on error and gaffe in evaluating an individual. 

Decades of reckless lies and deceit keep ratcheting up against him, his arguments fall apart with the slightest deconstruction of its illogical and unscientific nature and I quote a prominent scientist here, in that he would have no qualms killing his parents if the insurance payout was sizable.

Perhaps its the morbid fascination of the impossibly evil that draws us in, or the desire to make a damn good documentary. Sometimes, you've got to "get down in the mud with the fucking elephants."

[mvparikh-blog]

Conflict of Interest

The topic of "conflict of interest" was surprisingly unclear to me as an undergraduate student researcher in the Biochemistry department. Not until I migrated from an academic to the industry realm of things did I grasp the gravity of the term. Inexperience, lack of training and perhaps even naivety contributed to this misconstrued perception of its importance. 

However, the concept eventually grew to predominate a large segment of my cognitive development. The intrinsically high probability of the influence of finances on systemic finance became difficult to ignore. 

Bringing that awareness into the world of filmmaking, initially my general impression was that the attitude towards averting such conflicts seems to be more relaxed. This may have be due to the nature of filmmakers, and especially documentary filmmakers rather than the attorneys, although its prevalence is something I have not thoroughly looked into. How does someone investigating such conflict encounter pre conflict ?

For DocuDirectors, the ultimate goal is to submit their baby to various film festivals. Theoretically, this should be impacted in some manner if the sponsor of the film festival is slighted, disrespected or presented in a negative (albeit truthful) light, the sponsor may attempt to exert some pressure over the festival organizers to mitigate the presence of, or even completely drop a movie. This is what allegedly happened with Bananas! a movie about Dole's unsavory (pun intended) practices @ banana plantations, boldly captioned "The film Dole Food Co. doesn't want you to see!" which has an inherent intrigue to it. The alleged move by Dole may have brought some welcome publicity to the movie, although it is entirely plausible that Dole wished to do what it could, to protect it's good name. Fighting for one's reputation is not a crime.

That is what makes these issues interesting, isn't it? The presupposition that corporation/organization's decisions are based on financial/'selfish' interests, but documentary filmmaking is about truth and justice in a broader sense. When does it become alright to assume or presuppose these roles? 

Recently, Josh Fox (of Gasland fame) was recently "taken into custody by Capitol Hill police" from Tom Roston's PBS blog here. He starts the article w the quip "You can always count on the craftiness of the Fox". He does give credit where credit is due, and perhaps it is a good thing to villainize criminal conduct, but what about also encourage heroic journalism?

Are these incidents ever followed up to statistically analyze how many of these "conspiracies" later showed to have had any merit? The reason why I wonder if whether there are any numbers on such allegations of "suppression" alongside the financial situation, something that correlates the two. Are people more paranoid when they're broke? Any other factors? Does such conduct flourish in certain economic circumstances? 

Is there a global trend?

Earlier this month, Subir Ghosh resported in the Asian Correspondent here that an "award-winning investigative journalist Tom Heinemann was denied as visa by the Indian Embassy in Copenhagen". He made a documentary about the plight of the textile-mill workers in India titled "A Killer Bargain". Makes Russel Peter's joke a little more uncomfortable.

But money isn't always the reason why people's films are blocked. A French documentary The Wall (Le Mur) is being blocked by Lacanian psychoanalysts, who claim to go "back to and beyond Freud", as reported on RationallySpeaking here.  

I'm not saying there is. I'm asking. That's allowed, right?

Documentary filmmaker Kevin Kunze was recently thrown out of a CTIA conference for asking about the health effects of cellphones. Why can't we even address this concern if people have it? He had a valid media badge and all seemed in place, but his cameraman didn't have a "sticker" although he had a "badge". The sticker was a green dot they distributed at the door. I don't know what the policies are about filming at a conference, but perhaps a media pass confers more leverage, which would be intuitive. Kunze has been working on this documentary for the last year, and it definitely is shaping up to be pretty good.

On a brighter note, I have a new iPhone 4S! It's pretty nice. Siri is dumb, but I'm going to like her. Another reason to like your iPhone? Iranian documentary filmmaker Jafar Panahi made a documentary about the 20 year ban imposed on him (along with a six year prison sentence: read all about it here and watch the trailer to his documentary. 

[mvparikh-blog]

Who's The Boss?

How much of playing manager involves saying "Go on..." while appearing to be interested? 

A lot. 

Does taking charge involve sometimes being a bitch?

Quite a bit. 

What part of being a good friend entails having to say shit you really don't want to?

An uncomfortably large portion.

When do you start figuring this stuff out?

Too goddamn late.

[mvparikh-blog]

Con law discussion re: Presidential power mentioned my favorite Congressional speech EVER.

[mvparikh-blog]

Legal Drones

As part of an assignment in my IP Litigation class, I was asked to argue the cons of SOPA/PIPA.

After a Due Process analysis and a soft-core 4th Am argument, I switched to the First Am. I employed Lessig's thought from a TED talk: Jealously guarding copyrights may be even more imprudent than it was before, since the exceptions (fair use, parody..) are not the only reasons for concern of "chilling" speech. I suggested that perhaps such regulation is counter-intuitive given that it has become, as he said, a way of speaking, conversing and creative discourse. 

Using Lenz v Universal, I argued that this type of broadcasting was the technological equivalent of calling your mother to tell her about it. Then, I suggested that it would be wise to limit protections conferred upon copyright holders given that criminal infringement doesn't hold a candle to the First Amendment. 

Yes, I am aware of judicial procedure. I get how it is important to stick with the "rules". Precedent. Legalities. I freakin' understand. I assumed my audience was some sort of a Senate hearing, so I figured that instead of rigid Constitutional analysis, I'd use more-than-usual public-policy arguments (Senate hearings don't seem to comprise of purely legal analyses).  It's all bullshit anyway. When this automated legal-response-type of system is not only practiced, but revered to the point of actively excluding and belittling someone who inquires about the wisdom of its continued application, the legal system turns into a mockery. Litigators who look at what is, and don't ask why. They operate within a social vacuum, unable to look beyond that particular issue. Why would a school churn out anything other than well-spoken, well-dressed and articulate drones who follow the system and don't question it?

Whatever happened to common sense? I've never quite understood (as a Biochemistry major in college), the legal fascination w precedent or textual-arguments or Originalist interpretations. Sooo some old, possibly ignorant dude said something 75 years ago, and you are applying that to today's world because.... that..is..how..things work around here. Aahh. Makes perfect sense.

There's no wonder some attorneys are worried about being replaced by software. They should be. If litigation is the practice of employing law in a mechanical, formulaic manner, any computer can do it. LegalZoom can do that. When these drone-attorneys are thrown out of their jobs and replaced by a machine, maybe then they will open their eyes and see why they shouldn't have participated in this Draconian system in the first place.

As if that wasn't enough to make me question why I even went to law school: Then, I read this on Public Citizen's website, Citizen.org. I immediately thought about an article I read on my school's blog a couple months ago, titled "Study: USF Top Producer of Big Firm Partners". The article cited comes from "National Jurist", which seems to be a privately published magazine. There are several details in that article that are left out. Their website lists International Law Student Association as a "Site Partner", but ILSA doesn't list National Jurist as one of its publications. On the other hand, the fact that my school is being sued has not been disclosed to the students.

How do you deal with the disappointment of enlightenment without eventually becoming disillusioned?

[mvparikh-blog]

Lessig is More

...awesome than we thought!

Lawrence Lessig was casually dressed and spoke softly, but with clarity and honest reasoning, that is irresistibly sensible.

 In his book, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress - And A Plan to Stop it, Lessig discusses the puzzling findings from studies investigating cell-phone safety: industry-funded research is starkly less likely to find a "biological effect" rather than independently conducted research. Lessig believes that this discrepancy may be indicative of the impact of "funding from cellphone industry, lobbying pressures", and thus stripping them of credibility and scientific objectivity.

At a talk hosted at the Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, the discussion about the notion that there are "no effects of radio frequency electromagnetic fields besides the thermal ones" was brought up. Given the contradiction this poses to basic, natural laws of Physics, the impact of money on risk-assessment was discussed, in light of why this contention has been "successfully defended by the cell phone industry on purely economic reasons". After an enlightening talk by Dr. Franz Adlkofer, (see related blog here), an audience member stood up and posed a seemingly simple question: "What is the total number of people who would die? What is the risk?"

Lessig agrees. The mere existence of death doesn't indicate that there is a problem (and hence a conspiracy). He asks, what is the number? "Are we saying cellphones cause more deaths per year than cars?" 

Hmm...

Lessig actively distances himself from the conspiratorial view of the issue. Rightfully, he deems the utilitarian risk-assessment-based demand for a "number" a valid one. If we have the numbers, the incidence of certain health-effects, for example, "it should be an easy number to calculate", says Lessig, and he's right. 

It's a reasonable question.

Theoretically, it should be easy to figure out, given the risk posed by a certain consumer product & using elementary mathematics, how many (assuming these risks were maximally realized) people could actually die? 

I do not have an answer. Not because this is not verifiable, but because we do not know the extent yet. The real question is whether the fact that this number has not been presented should even matter. 

Asking a question about a number is like knowing that a stove you are about to touch is hot, but insisting on knowing the exact temperature of the stove, the possibility of burns and their degree and extent of damage that could be caused by sticking your finger on it (although Lessig wisely still advocates wearing an oven-mitt).

With cellphone safety, numerous issues compound the availability of information. The number of studies (even though they are growing), the relatively weak methodology utilized, small sample sizes employed, limited duration are some of the hurdles encountered by scientific personnel in charge of conducting these studies. 

Then, as Lessig brings up in his book, there is the question of the interest-based (and thus, inherently biased) research. In fact, some contend there has been a tobacco-industry-like campaign to destroy scientific findings.

The almost ironic concern, as raised in a WHO bulletin, is that Behavioral Risk Assessment studies (i.e. figuring out whether people actually put their phones under their beds when they sleep) were compromised by the alarming increase in cellphone-only households. Landline-surveys, the predominant method of data collection proves insufficient for surveyors to gather the data necessary to make recommendations to regulators.

Media articles addressing the issue are no longer journalistic investigations of truth but collections of conclusory statements rather than objective literature-reviews. Christopher Ketcham, the author of the GQ article about cellphone safety has openly discussed how much opposition he faced in writing it. Allegedly, the creator of the documentary Full Signal about EMF radiation had to overcome enormous hurdles in publicizing his message.  

Do we really need numbers? Perhaps regulators do. There is big money at stake. Real big money. Apple alone has grown over 10 times its direct competitors. The numbers are mind-boggling and unprecedented. Not to mention our dependence on our cellphones. No one is going to give up their phones. What's the sense is living longer if you are miserable while you do it? But refusing to publicize this information is plain wrong.  

(See enlarged pic here)

We've always known that improper cellphone use can be quite dangerous. That is not a novel concept. Handheld devices has warded off one of the many threats that improper cellphone use can pose. The issue now is whether we can continue to accept yesterday's solutions to today's problems. 

[mvparikh-blog]

Hell-Raising and a Handbasket

Having turned down a $500k budget, we wanted (and needed) help. We needed $$$. 

We decided to try and use Kickstarter,

and entrust our baby to the masses.

We've devised an 8-week plan  for all of our actions during every week of the Kickstarter period. (well, we have an outline so far, with WEEK # in Bold, and Sunday-Saturday written out under each week. Gotta start somewhere, yeah?)

What?

Hol' up?

  Oh, that $500k thing... yeah.

So approximately 4 months ago, DD was approached by a production company that wanted to make a movie based on her book. The eternal collaborator/ connector, she connected KK to the company.

They met. In a swanky downtown Manhattan high-rise. The 72nd floor.

KK said he could smell the good life. Then they casually threw out names... JayZ, Beyonce to promote... Kelsey Grammar to narrate... KK was stoked. 

Then came the demands: "We are going to appoint a co-director". "Your [Nobel-laureate, award-winning, best-selling] collaborator DD is too radical and controversial." "We don't like the title." "You must move to Montreal and live in an apartment with two other editors, working on the movie full-time."

Yes, we thought it sounded a little FoxConn-ish too.

So we did the right thing. The righteous thing. The rightfully-out-of-our-minds thing. Walked away. From $500k. Ugh, I know!

To quote my boyfriend's fav going-against-the-grain song:

Give 'em your two weeks,

at the dead-end job,

Do what you love,

be your own boss.

Do what they say can't be done

While you're still young.

[mvparikh-blog]

In Re: SOPA/PIPA and Senator Feinstein's response

A thoughtful Professor commented that my letter to the Senator's would not stand in the court of law. To avoid the misconception that I would rock up to court in dreads, unshaved armpits and baggy pants with just that letter (see older post) I've decided to post my response to Senator Feinstein's reply to the first message I sent her.

"Dear Senator Feinstein, I appreciate your email. I would be grateful if you could address these questions, please: Is this section (4) to be construed narrowly: - "Dedicated to the use of" must imply (according to case-law) no other uses exist.  - "Designed, operated or marketed and used" for "infringing purposes" is over-broad. Will this be limited to websites where the owners themselves intended to infringe, rather than user-uploaded content?  - DNS Blocking provisions are over-broad. "Private right of action" encourages troll lawsuits. What exactly would the copyright owners be able to do wrt taking action against potential infringers? YouTube, for example, already takes down (without notice to alleged infringer) once proper ownership documentation re: copyright is provided by CR holder. Even Lawrence Lessig, the guru of copyright law, lamented on how absolutely ridiculous it is that his video on Fair Use was taken down from YouTube because he allegedly used "too much" of WB-owned music on the video. That seems like sufficient authority and control in the hands of powers that be, lathering on any more would encourage formation and perpetuation of market monopolies. Also, the Bill incentivizes vigilante action by making "facilitating" IP infringement actionable, which was explicitly prohibited under DMCA Safe Harbor provisions. How is that not an infringement on the contested content creator's First Am? " Then, I wonder if IP protection is more important than the 4th Amendment. Why is the Homeland Security involved in an anti-piracy bill? Section 8 seems to condone going through people's mail, packages, luggage... There is no limit on the scope of their reach. What exactly is that that provision is trying to accomplish besides eviscerate people's 4th Am rights? The Bill is a complete sham - the potential for abuse is massive. It offends virtually every minimum standard of appropriate Congressional oversight. Any action supporting this bill would be perceived as a particularly egregious example of the supporter's incompetence and unfitness to continue to represent the people they refuse to listen to. Sincerely, Meghna Parikh"

[mvparikh-blog]

Risk Minimization, Fair Use in Documentaries

I accidentally discovered what my goal as someone's 'legal counsel' would be. To "minimize risk to avoid litigation". Sounds like a reasonable goal. I'd like for my friend (let's call him KK) to not get sued over the movie.

KK has hired an attorney (with a $3k retainer) to do that, but I can't say, in clear conscience or with much confidence whether his retention is definitively sufficient to preclude any possibility of KK being sued in the future (no offense intended).

Anyway, today we discussed license acquisition (copyrighted works need to be licensed for appropriate use). This includes clips, songs and pictures.

Clips include movie, advertisements, news, interview clips (with or without sound - not sure if this matters yet), songs (just the voice or with music video) and pictures (stills, search engine results).

Some interesting questions came up today and some of the research I did:

- How do you go about acquiring the license to content downloaded for YouTube? Do you just use it and hope no one sues and then cower behind YouTube? 

- There are different types of music licenses:

"Film Festival License" is a license that permits rights to use a particular copyrighted work for screenings done at any Film Festivals. I'm guessing DVD or Advertising or w/e are all differently acquired. I have a template of this type of licensing agreement (once I ask the creator if I can, I will upload it on here).

- Whether characters from a copyrighted work are themselves copyrightable

The answer seems to be "maybe". Sometimes, even though the work itself has fallen into the public domain, the character may be copyrightable by themselves.

I imagine a lot of the movie stills and clips used in KK's documentary would qualify under the "exception" for documentary-filmmaking.

- What exactly is Fair Use? What counts as Fair Use? Are there any documentary-exceptions?

Judicially, these factors are considered to decide whether use is "fair":

1. Purpose and Nature: "Legitimate public concern", "subject of public interest"

Photographic creations must "bow to the demands of history" - i.e. get over themselves at some point. Maybe not anymore though, apparently Congress can un-public domain stuff now (if it's valuable to some other country - screw American creativity)

2. Substantiality of portion used:

- Quantitative infringement (ratio of footage used to how much is available) and Focus (Was infringing footage the focus of the story?)

- "Sparing clips of subjects' work"

3. Impact on the market for the footage: "Meaningful effect" on copyright holder's ability to reap $ from their market. Would the infringement squeeze the copyright-holder from a particular market?

4. Documentary exception (?) [EDNY] -

- Enjoys a "favored status under s107" in EDNY

- "Something of value (doesn't have to NOT be entertaining if it is a documentary)", "Educational/informational"

This is the case, and relevant text is quoted:

"While plaintiff's copyrighted movies aimed to entertain their audience, [the] defendant's documentary aims to educate the viewing public of the impact that Arkoff and Nicholson had on the movie industry.The documentary appears intended to something of value rather than simply copying the copyrighted expression that it documents. Indeed, it seems likely to stimulate a market for the original rather than replace it. Just as a parody needs to mimic an original to make its point, and a biographer is permitted to quote his subject, so too a documentary about two filmmakers should be permitted to sparingly show clips of the subjects' works."

My $0.02 summarized perfectly in an Article by Daniel Eran Dilger on www.roughlydrafted.com, wouldn't THIS be the better way to do things? In a perfect world, maybe

"If the government had any interest in representing the rights of citizens as consumers, we’d have clear and fair consumer rights spelled out in law, and the music industry would have to respect them. Instead, the government is working for the industry, setting up a police state of criminal codes designed to enforce the anti-consumer laws already on the books."

[mvparikh-blog]

Very bizarre video brought to my attention. I have no idea what network this is, or who these people are. (See blog for more details)

What is Adelson going to ask for in return?

[mvparikh-blog]

Hey, Can You Do Me a Favor? [F/U From Video]

That video is pretty bizarre - it looks semi-fake. It's a pretty serious allegation, if it is true bc it implies a foreign country is trying to/can influence our elections.

About the video: It's hosted on "RT Network". It's not mainstream, so I looked up the website. One of the partners is Huffington Post and a couple other non-mainstream news websites. I haven't emailed them to confirm this "partnership".

I also did some looking into this guy: Turns out that is Max Blumenthal (a link to his Bio at HP) and The Nation Institute has at least, a nice, professional-looking page. In this day and age, pretty easy to fake though. But then, I'm not claiming to be hip enough to know the best underground sources of news, so maybe I'm just uninformed of them.

When I entered "SuperPAC Israel" into a popular searchengine (they are NOT verbs, people!), I came up with a bunch of random media links, most of which referenced this "online newspaper". Click on it, and you'll see why it's in quotes. One-man newspaper. Must be a very busy man. Or just someone sick of reading the same news on ALL the networks who said "F this, I'ma start my *own* damn newspaper". That'd be okay. I guess.

Anyway, the one thing that is a bit odd, though: What *is* true is that Gingrich did receive $5m from Sheldon Adelson (verified from LA times article from that I mean that I found a reference to this in LA Times online here ... maybe it's me being biased, but to me, that lends a report a little more credibility). 

What is Adelson going to ask for in return? 

[mvparikh-blog]

Uzbekibekistanstan

O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M-E-D

Want to abandon ship.Like that Italian captain.

Want to be shelved. Like SOPA.

Want to withdraw. Like John Hunstman.

Want to run away. To Uzbekibekistanstan

[mvparikh-blog]

Open letter to any Members of Congress who will Listen (Re: SOPA/PIPA)

Dear Congress[Person],

I am writing to convey my complete and utter dismay at SOPA and PIPA and the alarming implications these bills will have on free speech. Blocking avenues of communication is an attack against the people of America and in this time of want, an impermissible pillaging of hope.

Intellectual property is well-protected within our current system of enforcement - even copyright holders concede that demands for better or extended protection stem from greed, not from the principle of protecting a 'newbie' creation. [Ironically, the internet has made it that much easier for a concerned individual to acquire whatever rights he or she deems necessary.

Every generation has distinctive features but the world my parents were raised in is dramatically different from the one my age-demographic was thrust into. We grow up online. We don't know how to fold a map, or a newspaper because we've barely used either - GPS and virtual print are all we know. We'd rather shop at the dot-com than the store. We don't even know when our favorite shows air on TV because we stream them. We email our homework assignments.  We forge friendships, network, find jobs, and even find love on the internet. 

But the internet is more than that to us - more than a compulsive dependence, or a bizarre trend or even a mere mode of communication. It is, what seems to be now, the sole medium of expression not (entirely) subject to some form of regulatory moderation or censorship. Copyright law is stifling enough, but an unregulated internet ensures us virtual Due Process. 

I can attest to the devastating impact PIPA will have on the creative output of my generation. You see, we don't just make music, we conjure up digital remixes and "YouTube versions" of our favorite songs. We don't learn to play the guitar, we learn to DJ on Mixxx. We don't paint with water colors on a canvas, we produce 3D art on Corel. We don't just take photographs, we concoct fantastic visual masterpieces on Photoshop. We create online.  

You must vehemently oppose the horrifying limits on freedom of expression and creativity that are the core of legislation such as PIPA and SOPA. If you do nothing, you will not just stifle my generation, you will be responsible for strangling our voices into silence.

Please do not permit this travesty. Support us, stand up for us and defend our right to speak.

Sincerely,

Meghna Parikh

[mvparikh-blog]

I have never advocated 'passive' anything

M.K. Gandhi

[mvparikh-blog]

What on earth is going on here?

The Issues: "Right to Know" Ordinance, CTIA litigation, Scientific Process and reality, Disruptive Innovation, documentary filmmaking, deregulation and iPhone-addiction.

The Scene: Law student, San Francisco.

The Purpose: To collect my thoughts and focus my efforts on the projects by breaking them up into tiny, doable pieces. To some extent, legal archaeology. Maybe, to be able to claim that I "was there". When it all went down, I noticed. I observed. And I wrote. Like a madman.