SwiftVets.com

[JK]

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 9:13 a.m. EDT

Another Lawsuit Hits 'Stolen Honor'

Filmmaker George Butler sued Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. on Thursday, saying its documentary showing a one-sided view of presidential candidate John Kerry's anti-war activities violates his copyrights by using pictures and film without permission.

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The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, seeks unspecified damages and a halt to any use of the material Butler has created in the more than three decades he has documented Kerry's life.

Butler said in the lawsuit that Sinclair infringed upon his copyrights by the unauthorized reproduction of pictures and film for its documentary "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal."

The 42-minute Sinclair film consists largely of interviews with U.S. prisoners of the Vietnam War who survived torture in Hanoi and became enraged at Kerry and others for suggesting they had suffered for an unjust cause.

Messages left for comment with lawyers for Sinclair, based in Hunt Valley, Md., were not immediately returned.

Butler has taken at least 6,000 pictures of Kerry since he began documenting his life in 1969, convinced he eventually would be president. Some of the photos were published in a book, "John Kerry: A Portrait."

Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, served as captain of a Swift boat in Vietnam and won three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star for heroism. His service became a major campaign issue this year as several veterans who served on other boats appeared in television ads questioning his record and criticizing his later anti-war comments.

Butler has created a documentary, "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," in which some of Kerry's Swift boat crew praise his leadership and valor. The portrayal differs from the anti-Kerry message in ads run by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which accuses Kerry of exaggerating his service record.

The Butler film, released Oct. 1, traces Kerry's tour of duty as a patrol boat leader in Vietnam and his later involvement in the peace movement as a disillusioned veteran.

The lawsuit alleges that the Sinclair documentary also infringes on the copyrights of "Winter Soldier," a 1970s documentary chronicling Vietnam veterans describing atrocities they had seen.

The Kerry campaign announced Thursday it will not participate in the Sinclair news program even though even though the company has decided against airing the entire "Stolen Honor" documentary.

Sinclair, whose executives are contributors to Republican causes, originally said the hourlong program would air in prime time on all of its 62 stations, many in swing states, prompting protests from critics and shareholders. On Tuesday, the company announced the program would appear on 40 stations and would feature parts, but not all, of the documentary.

Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said Sinclair's announcement was "a panicked attempt to appear fair and reasonable."

Sinclair said its Friday program, "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media," will examine the use of documentaries to influence elections. Sinclair's vice president of news, Joe DeFeo, has said he hoped to have Kerry or a campaign representative appear on the show.

In its refusal, the Kerry campaign noted Sinclair fired its Washington bureau chief after he publicly criticized the program.

"When their own top political reporter had the courage to speak up, they fired him _ that tells you everything you need to know about them," Clanton said. "The Kerry campaign is in no way cooperating with this discredited, partisan effort that Sinclair is poorly disguising as news."


http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/10/22/91508.shtml

[Tilly]

REfresh me on this one, but I thought that once something is in the public domain it can be used in a news centered documentary ... ?

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

Public domain does not apply here because the person who created the film still claims full copyrights, which are in effect until he sells or gives any or all of them to someone else, or until 70 years after he dies, unless his estate renews the copyright.

What probably does apply is the fair use clause, which allows one person to use small parts of other artists' works for illustrative, comparative or instructional materials.

It's just a nuisance suit, in all likelihood paid for by Kerry and Company.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[hatecelebs]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41061

Butler sues company over use of footage it doesn't even plan to air

Editor's note: Sherrie Gossett, a longtime contributing reporter for WorldNetDaily, now works for Accuracy in Media in Washington, D.C., and files this report.
By Sherrie Gossett
© 2004 Sherrie Gossett

WASHINGTON – Today, the Associated Press reports that filmmaker George Butler is suing Sinclair Broadcast Group over an alleged plan by the company to include footage of his film in the big POW piece running tonight.

Butler wanted to stop Sinclair from using his pictures and film, the pro-Kerry "Going Upriver." This after Butler's executive producers Vincent Roberti and Bill Samuels joined in Deborah Rappaport's phone press conference Tuesday to make a big noise about how Sinclair should show their film along with "Stolen Honor" – to be fair and balanced – and offering over $1 million to Sinclair to air the documentary. "I'm really comfortable with this offer," Roberti said Tuesday, "I think it's a great alternative."

The Associated Press makes no mention of the previous Rappaport offer, even though AP reporter Alex Dominguez was in the phone press conference and reported the offer before. The AP story is running on Newsday, Fosters Online ABC News (WJLA ), News 24 South Africa, and on the Dow Jones newswires. A Reuters story also makes no mention of the previous offer.

Butler said the airing of clips would violate his copyrights. AP doesn't tell you that at Tuesday's press conference, Deborah Rappaport said she and husband Andrew had purchased the airing rights so that the film could be aired on Sinclair, offered to cover all the costs associated with airing the film, in addition to giving Sinclair $ 1million on top of that, to get the film on the air.

If the true intent here really was to get "Going Upriver" (or parts of it) on the Sinclair airwaves, surely working out copyright details is a minor matter. It's interesting to recall Samuels' comments at the million-dollar offer press conference. The "best outcome," Samuels said, would be for Sinclair to "back off" and not show "Stolen Honor" … or his own film.

It was MoveOn.org that originally started pushing for Sinclair to air "Going Upriver." That theme ran through all the other Democratic-led attacks on Sinclair over the last two weeks. The Rappaports pushed for it, the film's executive producers pushed for it, the Veteran's Institute pushed for it Wednesday at the National Press Club.

AP describes Butler as a "longtime chronicler" of Kerry, but omits a more nuanced identification of him as a 40-year friend of Kerry's who worked on the senator's first campaign.

AP notes that Butler has taken thousands of pictures of Kerry since 1969 and that the film includes many of Kerry's Vietnam War comrades praising his leadership and valor.

In contrast, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" is described as an "anti-Kerry documentary."

"That film consists mostly of interviews with U.S. prisoners of war who survived imprisonment and torture in Hanoi, and emerged enraged at Kerry for helping lead the anti-war movement after he completed his Vietnam service." AP reports.

This typical characterization of the POW testimony goes light on Kerry, implying the POWs are hawks who despise "those peaceniks" like Kerry. As in other press accounts, the specter of Kerry giving public testimony that characterized the U.S. military in sweeping terms as predominantly evil, at a time when POWs were still being held and under threat of death and torture, seems not to register as controversial with reporters. No distinction is made in the full spectrum between believing the war was a mistake, working to end it, and the graphic and over-the-top public pronouncements of Kerry. No reporter seems to have seen fit to ask if Kerry's motivations were sincere. Why did his actions all have to be in the public limelight? If Kerry was sincere, why didn't he express his graphic concerns privately with government officials and work through channels that represented no psychological or physical threat to present POWs?

Diana West of the Washington Times asks today, why won't any reporter ask Kerry exactly what kind of war crimes he's guilty of? (He confessed publicly that he had committed war crimes, at a time when it was more popular than now to say such things.)

And to top off today's story of the filmmaker lawsuit, comes word from defense lawyers at Sinclair that "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media" will not contain any of the copyrighted works.

Perhaps Butler had hoped to throw a last-minute wrench into their production/editing process.