Brilliant Reporting: NYT Recreates Wacky Deposition Over Definition Of A Photocopier

from the deposition-fun dept

The NY Times is launching a new service, which is quite awesome: taking interesting legal transcripts, and then filming them with actors. The first one is brilliant and a must-watch. The NYT got folks from the Upright Citizens Brigade to recreate the hilarious deposition fight concerning whether or not the Cuyahoga County Recorders' Office (in Ohio) had a photocopying machine, where the Office's IT guy (and his lawyer) worked very, very, very hard to not answer the question by constantly asking what is meant by a photocopying machine, leading to reasonable exasperation from the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case. The specific deposition, which dates back to 2010, involved the Recorders' Office refusing to hand out electronic documents, but instead telling people who wanted copies of records that they had to pay for them to be printed/photocopied at $2 per page. There's more on the case here, but watch the video first: As the NYT's Brett Weiner notes:

In this short film, I sought to creatively reinterpret the original events. (I’ve not been able to locate any original video recordings, so I’m unsure how closely my actors’ appearance and delivery resembles the original participants.) My primary rule was the performance had to be verbatim -- no words could be modified or changed from the original legal transcripts. Nor did I internally edit the document to compress time. What you see is, word for word, an excerpt from what the record shows to have actually unfolded. However, I did give the actors creative range to craft their performances. As such, this is a hybrid of documentary and fiction. We’ve taken creative liberties in the staging and performance to imbue the material with our own perspectives.

This is actually a pretty cool way to make use of new digital tools to bring certain news stories to life. While this may just be amusing right now, it'll be interesting to see how else it's used going forward.

Filed Under: deposition, ohio, photocopier, reenactment, reporting

Newscasters Reenact Final Four Moments Rather Than Wait For Game Highlight Rights To Clear

from the much-more-enjoyable-than-defending-fair-use-in-court dept

Pervasive and extensive copyright law is damage. Route around it. This team of newcasters did (even though it really didn't need to), resulting in something much more entertaining than the content being withheld.

WCJB TV20 in Gainesville, Fla., couldn't legally show highlights of the University of Florida Gators' win over the University of Dayton on March 29. Instead of waiting for footage rights to recap the game, sports anchor Zach Aldridge recruited his coworkers to recreate the game's biggest moments in an office conference room.

Here are the highlights, as recreated using only classically-trained newscasters, a small hoop and a ball. Even the game-ending tears of a Florida Gators player are reenacted for posterity.

In his introduction, Aldridge claims the station would be unable to play the highlights until the following day unless it "broke a whole bunch of laws." Clearly, the use of highlight clips would be covered under fair use (hello, criticism, commentary and NEWS REPORTING).

But you know what? Screw the restrictive IP climate that surrounds every major sporting event. Why play by those rules? Route around it while highlighting the restrictive stupidity that prevents you from showing viewers what they came to watch. Have that clip go viral (388,000 views and counting), rather than the NCAA-approved clips handed out to local broadcasters like gifts from a begrudging God.

I guess this is what maximalists mean when they say strict IP enforcement encourages creativity and innovation.

(Oh, and don't even think about drinking your beverages in anything but an NCAA-approved sponsor's cups.)

Filed Under: basketball, copyright, fair use, march madness, reenactment, sports