Per's Decent Blog

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[perkhoel]

WeVideo Tips and Fair Use

I made you a short (11 minute) video to go over a few more things in WeVideo — check it out:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/clh9if4jr59yhjs/weviceotips1-x410.mp4?dl=0

Citing Media and Basics of Fair Use

Please cite any and all media that you use that are not original at the end of your video. The format is up to you, but you must give credit to any kind of music, video clips, images, news clippings

As creatives, we unfortunately live in a very restrictive environment; whoever authors original work has a whole lot of exclusive rights to use that content. This is why you can’t sell bootleg copies of Frozen, and why TV and video producers have to be really careful about how they use things like music, news clippings, or news broadcasts in commercial programming.

Fun fact: for decades, nobody could use the “Happy Birthday Song” because Warner studio owned the rights and demanded huge sums of money and would sue anyone who used it without paying. The copyright ran out in 2017

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyright_status

This has several implications whenever we want to make use of non-original media in our own work — summarized here:

The safest material to use is anything you have gotten explicit permission or paid money for to the copyright-holder for the rights to use, or that you found in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. Unfortunately, the public domain is somewhat limited, and licenses for media like royalty-free music or stock footage can be very expensive! Note: music tracks available through WeVideo have already been licensed for you and you are free to use them without paying any fees.

Besides paying directly, there are other forms of safe licensing, such as CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSING. These are licenses that creators give to their content in order to make it more freely available and usable to other creatives. You can find a lot of music, imagery and video available under various “Attribution” licenses that require credit in your video, but no fees! Hurray! More details below.

We can also make use of copyrighted material in limited, specific ways for free thanks to a provision of the Copyright Act that guarantees FAIR USE. This gets more complicated, but in short, if you wish you use copyrighted media in your own piece, and there’s no license (paid or Creative Commons), you may use it if:

Your use is “ transformative”, such as for news / commentary, parody, documentaries, scholarship, or social criticism

Use a small amount (5-10 seconds)

Use different sources, don’t borrow from the same source repeatedly

Always give credit in your piece

Don’t try to make money off of it

Restrict access to the project

You get more leeway if the project is for an educational project

Public Domain

Anything is in the public domain if: (a) it’s copyright has expired, (b) if it was created by the federal government (e.g. NASA), or (c) if it was never protected by copyright law in the first place (e.g. mathematical formulas). Anything found in the public domain doesn’t require citation and you are free to use it however you please in your own work.

Resources for finding media in the public domain:

Archive.org — (photos, video, sound, music, etc)

PDInfo Music — (links to various public domain music files)

Morguefile — (just hundreds of thousands of free photos)

Creative Commons License

“Creative Commons” refers to a set of standards that make it easy to communicate how creators want other creators to use or not use their own work. There’s more to the licenses, but the major takeaway here is that you should feel free to use content that is licensed like this (as long as you give the creator credit in your end credits):

Attribution (CC BY)

Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

Resources for Creative Commons media:

Flickr Photos (Attribution license)

Creative Commons Music (big list of resources)

Vimeo Creative Commons (video)

Remember to

Make sure the media you’re using is the right license

Give credit!

Fair Use

Defined: "...asserting a legal right to use copyrighted materials without permission in a transformative way without excessive harm to the copyright holder."

Is there a clip you want to play in your video for context, or maybe to relate it to another news story? Maybe a news clip? Something from Youtube? What if you want a little bit of that amazing Prince song you love to play a the very end when you roll credits? Maybe you found some wonderful photos to borrow from the LA Times or the Associated Press. 

By exercising fair use, you can make limited use of copyrighted material, but I urge you stick to these same guidelines, fleshed out a little more here:

Transformative Use — if you are showing the original work in order to report on it for news / commentary, parody, documentaries, scholarship, or social criticism, that kind of use is covered under fair use.

Use a small amount (5-10 seconds) — use very small amounts and don’t show it on screen for very long; for example, you can play a famous song for 5-10 seconds, but no more (that’s how your favorite podcasts get away with it). 

Use different sources — don’t borrow from the same source repeatedly; sample different music tracks, different videos, different news sources for images, etc... 

Always give credit in your piece — keep an email or a note or a google doc to yourself as your work on the project. Note every source, web address, URL, and give credit to the creator (you can do this on screen when showing third party media, or end credits).

Don’t try to make money off of it — making money is usually not covered under fair use; but if we’re making small journalism projects in a classroom setting, we get a little more leeway!

Restrict access to the project — if you don’t expect a wide audience, then your use of copyrighted material is probably more likely to be fair use.

I will go over some of these points again in our last class before you finalize, but please send me any questions you have.

[perkhoel]

A light shower strikes as my wife checks out our community garden plot and harvests a few veggies

[the-escapist-artist-deactivated]

Pussy Power! Jolie Nunez Noggle

[perkhoel]

The west is in thrall to Kantian ideals of personal freedom. And suffers for it

Giles Fraser: "For successful people these days, loyalties are just temporary conveniences. Thus, notions of community get lost â, as do we."

[malefeminist]

The Mask You Live In, a new film that breaks apart traditional notions of masculinity is under development by the creator of Miss Representation. 

Be a man. Stop being such a fag. Grow a pair. You’re such a girl. Man up.

Every single boy growing up in the United States has heard these phrases at least once over the course of his life. They are all too common. They are also all too damaging. Most think that “toughening" boys is just a rite of passage, but a growing body of research is showing just how harmful these messages can be.

A new documentary brought to us by MissRepresentation entitled The Mask You Live In will be exploring the systemic societal problems caused by toxic masculinity.  The director Jennifer Siebel Newsom interviewed men and boys across the country and what she found was jaw-dropping. She found that although men are dying to speak, they are taught to stay silent. They spend their life wearing a mask that they are taught to never remove. See what happens when they take it off.

Read more about it.

[perkhoel]

G-strings and Ph.D.s

Katherine Frank stripped, interviewed her customers and then wrote a thesis about male desire.

[thinkmexican]

[perkhoel]

Love the shitstorm that is actually being dusted up around the world over NSA spying allegations. It was also discovered today in a poll that most Americans see Snowden as a whistleblower, and it cuts directly through party lines, both Republicans and Democrats with its apathetic and passionate for and against. And then: (via thinkmexican )

Snowden Releases New Documents Revealing US Spying on Mexico

The United States has been using PRISM and other surveillance programs to monitor emails, voice calls and online chats in Mexico, Brazil and other counties in the region, reports Brazilian newspaper O Globo. The paper’s report is based on documents released to it by former CIA and NSA analyst Edward Snowden.

According to O Globo, the US’ primary interest in Mexico is intelligence gathering on narco-tracking and “energy,” although its not clear if this refers to Pemex’s proposed energy reform.

The report also mentions Mexico as one four countries in the region where the NSA operates a spy center, information previously reported by Proceso.

WikiLeaks files published in La Jornada in 2011 revealed former president Calderón gave almost complete free range of Mexico’s national intelligence to the FBI, DEA, ATF and other US agencies operating in Mexican territory while he was in office.

Enrique Peña Nieto reportedly ended many of his predecessor’s close ties with US intelligence agencies soon after taking office in December. The Washington Post reported in April that EPN closed a major DEA intelligence center operating in Monterrery, Nuevo León, that had been running since at least the Calderón administration.

Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook

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[misschievous-girl]

[perkhoel]

Bad male feminists.

[perkhoel]

Very stimulating overview of very radical and relevant feminist thinkers Rich and Firestone.

"They asked how we had organized ourselves in social and economic relations, what the consequences of these organizations were, and how it might be done differently. The result was not a laundry list of “issues” to be dealt with, but an analysis of a system that deforms everything from work and family to art and science. It’s an analysis that continues to resonate, even as public discourse declares on the one hand that feminism’s goals have been accomplished, and on the other that they were always impossible."

...

Firestone’s work stands out among that of other radical feminists during that period. She resisted the common notion that sexism is an easily fixable glitch in an otherwise just and functioning society, noting that conventional wisdom instinctively understands this... “The problem becomes political, demanding more than a comprehensive historical analysis, when one realizes that, though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological conditions that created his tyranny over women and children, he has little reason to want to give this tyranny up,” she writes."

...

"Rather than argue for the moral righteousness of women’s equality, as earlier utopians might have done, she outlines the ways in which sex inequality is embedded in every aspect of culture and society. Until that changes, she suggests, it’s no good to try to dissuade a mother from telling her daughter that she must employ certain tricks to “trap” a man. Until it changes, there’s little chance of changing anyone’s mind about what men and women are really like or what they have always done."

...

To suggest that children have rights — let alone that they are an oppressed class whose situation is analogous to that of women, as Firestone does — is to invite ridicule. And yet she demonstrates that even the traditional association of women and children is not without foundation in our current social roles. Both women and children have been told that their exclusion from the public sphere is for their own good, and both are conditioned to placate others in exchange for affection and protection. Women are romanticized to maintain the illusion of innocence; children, the illusion of a golden age. “In a culture of alienated people, the belief that everyone has at least one good period in life free of care and drudgery dies hard. And obviously you can’t expect it in your old age. So it must be you’ve already had it.” But isn’t it better that children go to school, no matter how soulless, than to the factories? And aren’t the family and the consolations of love and romance better than the corruptions of the workplace?

[perkhoel]

SPONSORED: Red Lobster: Taking Up The Vanguard In The Fight Against Women In The Workplace

But not at Red Lobster. For over 40 years, the country’s preeminent seafood restaurant chain has strived to maintain a respectable business environment in both its restaurants and its corporate structure. And though the currents of change may have shaken the resolve of other eateries, Red Lobster’s leadership is in firm agreement that their company now and forever will remain at the forefront in the ongoing fight against women in the workplace.

“Red Lobster’s corporate values have always been directly aligned with the interests of the traditional American family, and that means we are vigorously opposed to the female infiltration of the workplace,” said Clarence Otis Jr., CEO of Red Lobster’s parent company Darden Restaurants Inc., and a self-described “die-hard opponent” of the women’s rights movement. “That’s why, when you step into one of our restaurants for a taste of the most delicious seafood around, you won’t see a single female employee who isn’t a server or hostess, and you’ll never, ever see a woman working in any kind of supervisory role.”

[holy-mountaineering]

[perkhoel]

thank you so much! :)

Happy to help. It's bizarre to me that the culture simultaneously seems to grasp the problems with constructed and idealized gender norms, while still not bothering to understand, or give a shit. Thanks for doing your cool, creative part towards awakening the beast.  

[ayomeredith-deactivated20240824]

[perkhoel]

Just wanted to share these great images by ayomeredith:

For this body of work, entitled “Hailee”, I photographed my 11 year old niece in scenes which exemplified qualities of the “perfect woman”. In the United States, these qualities include being beautiful, smart, sexy, able to cook and clean, all while still being pure and innocent. I created this portfolio to illustrate the pressures women feel to be all of these things, and to show how these ideals are being instilled in girls’ minds from a very young age...

[gadflies-org]

Chicago High School Students Hold Vigil to Stop School Closings, Students Arrested (PHOTOS)

“Today, students, parents, teachers and community members gathered on 61st and Cottage Grove to protest school closings which will have a direct impact on their safety. They called for resources to be given to them, not taken away. Towards the end of the protest, several students and allies blocked traffic in a symbolic die-in and were arrested..” — Sarah-Ji Fotografa

[perkhoel]

Nun guilty of nuclear site break-in

Sister Megan said her only regret was waiting so long to stage her protest. "It is manufacturing that which can only cause death," she said.

In a statement to the court, Boertje-Obed said: "Nuclear weapons do not provide security. Our actions were providing real security and exposing false security."

The three activists admitted cutting the fence to get into the site, walking around, spray-painting words, stringing out crime scene tape and chipping a wall with hammers. They spent two hours inside.

They also sprayed the exterior of the complex with baby bottles containing human blood.

When a guard approached, they offered him food and started singing.

[perkhoel]

First ever domestic abuse ad in Saudi Arabia. I lived in Saudi Arabia once and agree with Redditor ofthreesteps that it's going to take more than a clever ad to change the culture in the country. Still, change is happening there, however slowly: a Saudi prince recently made a public case for allowing women to drive (though mainly for economic reasons...).

[perkhoel]

How ‘Slut Shaming’ Has Been Written Into School Dress Codes Across The Country

Last month, a New Jersey middle school banned girls from wearing strapless dresses to prom. Administrators claimed that the dresses were “distracting” — though they refused to specify exactly how or why. Parents reacted strongly to the rule; some supported the dress code while others deemed it “slut-shaming.” On Friday, the school compromised by allowing [...]