3/31/2008

Copyright...blah,blah, blah

A couple of weeks ago there was a dust-up concerning the Associated Press and their rather selective interpretation of the Copyright laws of these United States. It seems the AP had been very hostile to a blogger who had been posting and commenting the AP's news photos, and then had almost immediately turned around and mis-appropriated the personal photos of one newly famous call girl that had been posted on a personal blog.

As usual Instapundit has a good synopsis: "WHEN A MEDIA ORGANIZATION DOES IT TO AN INDIVIDUAL, IT'S NOT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT"

The best part is that if you check out the Spitzer article in the March 24th print edition of Newsweek, you can again find one of Ashley Dupré's personal photos, but Newsweek is kind enough to give photo credit to "AP". I guess there is honor among thieves...

Now I related that copyright story to bring up another one.

Many years ago, the U.S. Navy stood tall and shot down some Libyan MiG-23s. I remember it distinctly as I was a High School military geek, and even got the first CNN airing of the Pentagon release on videotape. This was before videos of military action were commonplace, and I remember the pilot's audio comms vividly.



So why would I bring this up after an unrelated story about copyright?? Well, some audio from that actual Mediterranean dogfight (some of which is at ~1:00 of the video above) can be found in the movie "Under Siege" in the scene when an F-18 does a flyby of the USS Missouri.

So my question is, if you are a member of the U.S. military, and your likeness/voice/etc is used by the media or Hollywood in a commercial venture, are you entitled to any royalties from that venture??

Should the pilot of that F-14 be owed royalties for his 'performance' in "Under Siege"?

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