Another lawsuit for Sinclair: George Butler ("Going Upriver") sues!

[Sparkly]

NEW YORK -- 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.

(snip)
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."

(snip)
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.

Courtesy of LBN...

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--sinclairsued1021oct21,0,5307486.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire

[Laelth]

1. Excellent!

Nothing like a good lawsuit to get a greedy capitalist's attention!

(soapbox)

BTW (say no to tort reform. tort law is how we make the corporations behave like decent citizens. they need to be very afraid of a big punitive damage award.)

(off soapbox)

:eyes:

-Laelth

[Sparkly]

2. AP article

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&ncid=696&e=4&u=/nm/20041021/pl_nm/media_sinclair_dc

[Grillymom]

3. I doubt that will help their stocks!

I agree about tort reform. I'm really hating this admin's relentless negative attitude toward attorneys.

[Sparkly]

6. PS -- rate the AP story a "5"

A funny irony -- there's a photo of Cheney with headline "Cheney Calls Kerry's Hunt a Cover-Op" just two stories above this one, with this photo:

[fob]

5. snip from story

Lawrence Fabian, a lawyer representing Butler, Swift Boat Film and Winter Film, told Reuters he had heard from defense lawyers the one-hour news program, "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media" to be aired on Friday would not contain any of the copyrighted works.

So now you can steal copyrighted works as long as you don't show them to 40 million people. Remember when the RIAA was suing 12 year old girls for dowloading Britney songs?

[dogtag]

4. I wondered about the stills used in the bogus

documentary. Too bad George didn't do his sooner, but better late than never. George Butler is my secret crush.