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Navy Seal POW Photos: I'll Vote Fair Use
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Thursday, December 30 @ 12:56:29 EST Copyright
Some Navy SEALs and their families have sued AP for publishing in early December some photos of Navy SEALs in Iraq treating prisoners questionably after invading civilian homes. These photos are earlier than the Abu Ghraib photos, and the Navy is now investigating the matter. If I were one of these sailors, I would be far more concerned with what the Navy will do than what AP did. Of course, the SEALs have no power to stop either. Assuming these photos are like the Abu Ghraib photos, publishing them is a clear case of fair use.

An interesting wrinkle is that an AP reporter accessed the photos from an online web gallery put up by a SEAL wife, who believed the gallery to be password-protected. Without this mistake, the photos (and also some official ones) may have never been public, and there may never have been an investigation. I am honestly not sure what I would do with gruesome and possibly criminal photos brought home from Iraq, but putting them on the Internet in a public gallery accessible using some Iraq/SEAL-related keywords is the equivalant of turning the photos in to the police (well, the Navy), which was the right thing to do.

 
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The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.

Re: Navy Seal POW Photos: I'll Vote Fair Use (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, December 30 @ 22:48:45 EST
I should think it's more important to protect the identity of active SEALs than anything else.


[ Reply to This ]


DMCA issue? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, January 01 @ 17:43:07 EST
Could the reporter have been circumventing an access control mechanism (even if it was useless)? If so, does the DMCA trump fair use? (i.e. even if you have a fair use defense for copyright infringement does it protect you from the anti-circumvention laws)?


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Re: Navy Seal POW Photos: I'll Vote Fair Use (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, January 09 @ 02:49:26 EST
-1, conclusionary.


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