Last night unable to sleep I headed to a few blogs I enjoy looking for something to read. My first visit was to Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things. A few stories in I paused, unsure of what to think.
The title of the post was, Fox Helps Itself to Photo of Blogger's Dog. I was curious so I linked over to the story and was stunned.
What FOX (the network, not the fake news channel) did wasn't nearly as bad as helping Bush lead us into a war in Iraq, helping to swiftboat vets cause they happen to be in the wrong party, or lieing on average about every :30 seconds. Instead what is below the fold is just another example of how sad of an organization News Corp is across the board.
If you are looking for a non-candidate diary, want to laugh and get mad at the same time, here you go. Enjoy.
Tracey is what she calls herself a Mommyblogger with a pretty neat site (both funny and well written) called Sweetney. She was minding her own business, doing mommy stuff while her husband was watching the Saints/Eagles game on FOX when (complete post here):
Suddenly, Jamie called to me from the other room, claiming I had to come see something. When I entered the room, he unpaused the broadcast he had been watching (thanks, TiVo!), and immediately I saw the image of an adorable pug, dressed in festive Santa gear, pop up at the bottom of the screen beside FOX's Happy Holiday's ticker. I vaguely remember Jamie saying something to me to the effect of, "Gee, that dog looks a lot like Truman, doesn't it?", but I couldn't really process something as complex and nuanced as language at that moment, what with MY FREAKIN' HEAD EXPLODING ALL OVER THE PLACE. Because that adorable pug? That pug didn't just look a lot like Truman. THAT ADORABLE PUG WAS TRUMAN.
FOX had gotten hold of one of my photos of Truman -- specifically one in a series I'd recently posted here with him wearing a Santa suit -- very slightly doctored the image by removing the flash-flare lighting his eyes (good aesthetic choice there, FOX!), slapped a superfluous Santa Hat on his head, and then dropped the purloined pic into the on-screen graphic rotation for their Saints/Eagles telecast.
To show she does have a great sense of humor she then wrote:
Did FOX Broadcasting, without my knowledge or consent, sign a contact with Truman behind my back giving them rights to all extant images of his adorable, fawn-colored smushiness? I mean, I know Truman's a bit hungry for fame, but I never expected this kind of shameless Eve Harrington shit out of him. Traitor.
She goes on to state the obvious.
What really, REALLY sticks in my craw is that following all this I was forced not only to sit through several more hours of football just to make certain they didn't show the image again (yes, please shower me with your pity), but I also had to endure the endless tape-loop of FOX's NFL copyright warnings, which seemed to repeat every five minutes or so. Hilariously enough, FOX Broadcasting and the NFL are apparently very, very concerned about legal rights to their telecasts and rebroadcasts of their telecasts. They're concerned about -- ho ho, it's rich -- PEOPLE STEALING THEIR SHIT. But as far as them stealing other people's shit goes? Errm, not so much.
Ok, again I know in the grand scheme of things (Iraq, the Bush White House, the shredding of the Constitution to name a few) this is pretty small time stuff. But IMHO it goes to something deeper, a complete lack of respect for anything but what they care about or want.
I've worked close to 20 years in the field of advertising. There are many, many safeguards to ensure something like this doesn't ever, ever happen. Dozens in fact. For them to be able to secure almost this exact image would have taken somebody about :15 seconds.
But no, that would have cost them money. Instead lets just steal it.
What is scary is to think how often is this might happen and the copyright owner just doesn't catch it? How often might you have taken a picture or wrote something and FOX just steals it (or any other billion dollar media company as well).
News Corp is suing YouTube for billions cause user submitted videos from FOX show up on their site. They don't want to pay writers for Internet-based or DVD sales for content they wrote. They slammed Mitt for using their debate coverage in a commercial (and made him remove the content).
Yet at the same time they're doing all of this they are stealing (no other word for it) copyrighted materials from some mommyblogger. How far have we fallen?