Councilman Conwell Speaks Up About Crime To Those Hurt Most

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 03:38.

Cleveland Councilman Kevin Conwell at Obama Rally with youths

"78% of the homicides in the City of Cleveland are African American Males murdering each another!" was the small print I first noticed on the flier stuck between the bars on Snag's Glenville door, when I stopped by the other day.  The flier is for a Young African American Males Resource Fair, hosted by Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell. As stated on the flier, "The purpose of the Resource Fair is to provide young African American males in our community with the information they need to be successful". This is Conwell's approach to attack the root causes of murder in Cleveland, by working from the roots-up.

This will provide attendees with job education opportunities, fatherhood information and record expunging info. This is an excellent program that makes a big difference to the people served.

East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer hosted an x-offender program in his community, in 2006, which attracted hundreds of people.

Such hands-on, one-stop approaches to confronting core social challenges like workforce reentry, fatherhood and training makes sense, and bringing that to the community is the most effective approach.

As I looked more closely at the flier, I noticed something else interesting... the featured photo was one I took last fall during the Obama campaign, when I was covering an event. There couldn't be a better, more appropriate use for it now.

 

AttachmentSize
ConwellFlier.jpg142 KB
ConwellFlierDetail.jpg17.75 KB

Real men give credit where credit is due

 

Hey Norm,  Nice extemporaneous shot of  Cleveland Councilor Kevin Conwell and the kids.   From your surprise in seeing your photo in print, I get the idea that before YAAM Fair  printed your photo no one got your authorization to use it.   

 I know the YAAM Fair is a positive purpose,  and I’m sure you would have been glad to allow them to use your photo,  but from the civil/civic side of things, obtaining permission to use someone else’s copyrighted photo is also a good lesson for the kids (and the Councilor).  

 Now the ball is in your court to bring the apparently unauthorized use to their attention.   An interesting twist in the copyright law is that if you know of a copyright violation, and don’t take any steps to object to infringement, your lack of action may result in a claim that you waived your rights.  

 Recognizing that it would be awkward for you to personally make an issue out of the unauthorized use of your photo, perhaps it would be wise for Realneo/Real.coop to develop a friendly but firm  “form letter” to be sent out in this type of circumstance. 

It isn’t the first time that a photo whose copyright belongs to one of the Realneo members has been pulled off the web and used without it's owner's authorization or attribution – so a policy response needs to be developed.   

And those of us posting to our blogs on Realneo have to be diligent not to grab copyrighted material from other web sites and improperly post it to realneo in toto.  Remember the 2 A's - authorization, attribution.

 

Terms of use for content on realneo

I didn't know Conwell was going to use my phioto in his flier, but I'm proud to see my photo in good use, hope it inspires others, and am honored it was selected for this flier...

I sent the photo to Conwell after the event, because I liked it and thought he'd appreciate having it - I think I authorized him to use it then, and consider him a friend of REAL CO-OP - he was the first person I went to in planning the Co-Op Farms Initiative in Glenville, and he is 100% supportive - so he is welcome to use any of my photos any way he likes...attribution is always appreciated, but I'm just glad to help make things here better.

And my general attitude about my photos is if they are put to good use by good people that is welcome - bad people better just stay away from me and all my property in general. Bad people steal from me, I'll get them.

It is up to the individual to control their own content - put it on Facebook, etc. and kiss your rights goodbye...

I put mine on REALNEO where it remains mine, and I actually get contacted all the time by people who want to use my photos for commercial and public uses, and we make appropriate arrangements, if I choose... just got an inquiry yesterday

But I completely agree with your points regarding everything about copyrights, Jeff, and agree we need to work through issues for our terms of use and legal practices.

Terms of use are something that will always differentiate real.coop from other social networks - all the content will always be controlled by the creator.

Disrupt IT

copyrights, quotes, linking

Re: copyrights: Does real.coop/realNEO/7GEN have a policy on quoting an article, linking to an article and/or copying the entire text of an article onto the pages of reaNEO? It appears this may be unclear not just on realNEO, but elsewhere as well.

FAIR USE ON THE INTERNET

 

Fair use on the Internet

A US court case in 2003, Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, provides and develops the relationship between thumbnails, inline linking and fair use. In the lower District Court case on a motion for summary judgment, Arriba Soft was found to have violated copyright without a fair use defense in the use of thumbnail pictures and inline linking from Kelly's website in Arriba's image search engine. That decision was appealed and contested by Internet rights activists such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who argued that it is clearly covered under fair use.

On appeal, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the defendant. In reaching its decision, the court utilized the above-mentioned four-factor analysis. First, it found the purpose of creating the thumbnail images as previews to be sufficiently transformative, noting that they were not meant to be viewed at high resolution like the original artwork was. Second, the fact that the photographs had already been published diminished the significance of their nature as creative works. Third, although normally making a "full" replication of a copyrighted work may appear to violate copyright, here it was found to be reasonable and necessary in light of the intended use. Lastly, the court found that the market for the original photographs would not be substantially diminished by the creation of the thumbnails. To the contrary, the thumbnail searches could increase exposure of the originals. In looking at all these factors as a whole, the court found that the thumbnails were fair use and remanded the case to the lower court for trial after issuing a revised opinion on July 7, 2003. The remaining issues were resolved with a default judgment after Arriba Soft had experienced significant financial problems and failed to reach a negotiated settlement.

In August 2008 U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, California ruled that copyright holders cannot order a deletion of an online file without determining whether that posting reflected "fair use" of the copyrighted material. The case involved Stephanie Lenz, a writer and editor from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, who made a home video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy and posted the 29-second video on YouTube. Four months later, Universal Music, the owner of the copyright to the song, ordered YouTube to remove the video enforcing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lenz notified YouTube immediately that her video was within the scope of fair use, and demanded that it be restored. YouTube complied after six weeks, not two weeks as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lenz then sued Universal Music in California for her legal costs, claiming the music company had acted in bad faith by ordering removal of a video that represented fair-use of the song.[23] Warner Music Group has followed suit, ignoring fair-use and deleting any video with music that they have rights over--no matter how big or small the audio clip is.