In this entire drama above, I don’t consider my actions to have been wrong. Except miss-spelled names, everything else I feel is with-in my right as an individual who likes to film and post things online and who is very public with my life and correspondences. I absolutely believe in the golden rule and in Karma and am not concerned for myself because I feel I’ve given a lot of myself to making films, sharing videos, sharing knowledge and trying to improve the world. So anyways, thats my stance, it’s no big deal that I posted that correspondence, I was just using the real dialog to create a conversation about something I though it was important to blog about so I wouldn’t have to paraphrase. Why be a secondary source when I can use the primary source from my inbox. And a lot of positive things have come from this post including some of the brainstormed ideas above about how a better internet could better deal with individuals that wish to not be linked to.

Now, I have learned a few things. And since this incedent I’ve been doing two thigns differently.

1. I now usually write down the link people I film want attached to the footage and the name they want in the tags.

2. I don’t post multiple performers in one video. If I liked the way performances played off each other, then I should post them all in a row one after the next in reverse order so they come up on my blog in the proper order to watch them in.

Those two things would have prevented the entire above debacle. The only other thing I may day if I’m worried might be to email a video as private to someone to give them a chance to see it before it goes live on tubemogul because I now know how basically impossible it is to pull something down after it’s posted there. But seriously guys, my threshold for time here is very low, I’ve got my own actual art that I’m trying to create the majority of the time, posting other peoples art is basically like a fun pass time for me so until the tools themselves to record meta data and to have-two directional approved links manifest I might not have the time to wait to hear back from people before their videos go live. Plus it’s more exciting when the next morning the coverage is up from the previous nights performance.

Anyway, I have to go edit some episodes.
Arin

Or, maybe, “Don’t Tread On Me”…?

If you’re looking at it from an “anarchy” mindset, you might want to think about those two maxims…. and “Eye For An Eye”, as well.

Karma man, be careful… in the system of anarchy, the only rules are the karma-based ones.

Anyway, the footage wasn’t “BAD”, it was just raw. I’m exploring that lately. Posting footage that hasn’t been edited at all. I did put a fade in and fade out every time the camera started and stopped. Which I regret because that actually put too much expectations into the footage making people think they might get something edited nicely.

If you look at my video channel in iTunes you’ll see it consists of mostly Raw footage. If you want to see something highly edited, take a look at Four Eyed Monsters or our episodes. But I don’t think it’s always about souping everything up with over production.

Several artists I’ve filmed and posted raw have nothing but nice things to say as do their fans. It even sounds like people that dig your music didn’t even have a problem with the footage.

And Ed, in reaction to your comment above, I’m not trying to be a “journalist”. Just because I have a site with an RSS feed does not lock me into some weird set of standards and protocol. Bloggers trying to be on the more journalist tip are doing a great thing by publishing serious content in the form of a blog, I love that, but that shouldn’t lock everyone with a blog into helping their reputation be professional.

Bottom line people is this is the wild west. This is anarchy. The internet is what we make of it. Do I like it the way it is. No. Thats why I’m committed to changing the internet to solve some of it’s problems. One big obvious problem is that links can’t be approved by the person being linked to in order to create a stronger ‘super’ link that the internet could give more weight to. Also there is no easy way to re-edit raw footage.

Two things I’m working on the concepts for will improve this. One is universal social networking that works outside of facebook and youtube so you don’t have to use something like TubeMogul and so that the individuals and bands tagged in a video can approve the tag. It’s like a politician that is going to have some media out there they approve and other media that was just captured and posted that they have no control over.

The other thing is online collaborative video editing environments. So you post raw footage and anyone who wants to “subscribe” to your raw footage can do so but for the most part your raw footage exists buried in obscurity. This is important to encourage a cinematographer to capture with out worry of too much scrutiny. But if anyone ever wants to make a video about say a band then it’s important this material be publically available and search-able by humans or machines. Some one could cut a documentary or even further in the future robots could cut a documentary. They could look at date stamps, photos, information about who is in the shot whether it be audience or the artist and just work it all out on the fly. You could type in a few words and started watching an edited piece.

This is the future I’m experimenting with now by filmming when ever I’m inspired and turning the camera off when ever I feel it’s natural to do so. THen posting everything raw and linking to the artists but also providing full quality quicktime files so anyone can re-cut into what ever they’d like. And since the ability to edit footage is still something only a few people have, I still have a standing offer “mike” that if you want to come over with that other footage or some how get that to me I’ll cut something based on this raw material.

Anyway guys, keep an open mind, thats all I’m trying to do here, pave the way for a better future.

You’re supposed to be a JOURNALIST… that’s what bloggers are, right?!? Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but an ethical journalist would never, ever reveal names of sources, private correspondence, OR shoot video in a private venue without permission… The artist retains his/her rights to license that performance at their discretion.

Bloggers are still battling uphill to become “credible” in this economy because of actions not unlike your own. I hope you’ve learned by now that capturing an artists’ performance and distributing such is not only ethically wrong, it’s also illegal according to United States law.

Would you want someone stealing one of your videos, chopping it up poorly, and then distributing such saying, “here’s Arin’s work!”…?

Regards,
Ed

Everyone I’ve showed it to (besides those cats I’m working with, who I convinced as of now not to go after you because you are a fellow artist and you made at least most of the videos private) think that we look alright, but that the video is “weird”, “bad” etc. I’m a graduate of NYU film school… and Arin, let me just tell you that if a video like that one showed up in a class, you would get Failed. And it didn’t just show up in class- it showed up published.

What really bugged ME is that I HAD NO IDEA THAT YOU WERE FILMING THE SHOW. You only asked me about it/LET ME KNOW ABOUT IT after posting the video EVERYWHERE. That was the problem. YOU NEVER ASKED ME FOR PERMISSION… and you posted it all over the place. Literally everywhere.

I was mad on principle. Pissed. Plus your footage really sucks. I mean if you had actually made an artistic video, I wouldn’t have minded at all. But cutting in and out of songs the way you did? Shooting the audience yawning? (we played at the end of a 3 hour long dance performance! kids were tired) I dig on disjunction, but man… that video is like sea-sickness.

Obviously, you didn’t bother posting the weeks of correspondence beforehand of me saying that I had NO idea that the video was not only being shot, but also going to be spammed all over the web with your tubemogal whatever it is spampost-program.

My interaction with you has just shown me that you don’t (1) have much respect for your work (just watch the video!) (2) don’t have any respect for the artists that you don’t work for (3) don’t have much class…posting correspondence?

You not only couldn’t get my name right when writing me your polemic, but also misspelled the girl’s name who PUT ON THE SHOW! Maybe you should spend more time working on your filmmaking and less on trying to hurt and talk bad on fellow artists.

Love,
“Mike”

You know, the funny thing is that I actually post private correspondences all the time. But rarely is their any agressive attitudes so I’ve not once gotten flack or any sign that trust was violated.

I think we all need to reserve the right to be able to quote people at anytime via any correspondence. And personally I think including the actual content that was said is stronger and more respectful then paraphrasing with my own spin.

It’s persona sampling. And I think it should be an internet given right, part of the fun, part of the expression tool set and part of the learning. But if someone is being a Jack Ass and it’s clear, then their credibility will go down with everyone. But I’m a risk taker so your going to see me continually take big risks. Nobody knows yet whether or not this musician or others are going to not trust me because of this post. I’m still a fan of his music and still would help him do the music video I had offered him that would replace the google top 10 results with something he was happy with. I don’t think we are enemies and this scuffle isn’t big enough to become enemies in my book. Maybe just a bit of an unbalance at the moment that will be resolved in some capacity later.

So Dorian and Andrew, i don’t think we should all decide, “Thy shall not post one on one correspondence to a blog.” Instead of a rule, lets just say that I’m taking a risk by doing that. But lets also say risks are good. I don’t want the internet to become to Northern California (where I’m from). Everyone tip toes around each other putting on fake smiles and pretending to be polite. Lets keep the east coast flare to this all and be real and truthful and stand behind our actions.

Thats the best way to have integrity. Everyone is comfortable being sampled because they stand behind what they say or at least stand behind the fact that it made sense to say it at the time. Stand behind what we look like. And we stand behind our performances. And stand behind our actions. And we stand behind our art. And stand behind our blog posts. And stand behind our camera work decisions that sometimes other people don’t like and then they ask you to take the footage down but I’m just going to have it be private for a while, remove the tags and then make it public again.

And for the future of the internet, I’d love to see a day where I could post a video but set it to not appear on the web until the tags have been approved. So If I wanted, I could have the video just post, but I might decide that I only want it to post once everyone tagged in it sees it and then hits “approve tag”. This can be for people, music, places, brands, and who knows what else. And what happens if the tag doesn’t get approved? Then the video can still go up but with out the link to them. The cool thing about this is then they’d have a copy of everything they were tagged in and could easily display all that on their site. Anyway, the internet has a long way to go, but lets keep the dialog going because it’s conversations like this that I think help re-shape it.

Arin

1. First of all, I want to point out that for all intents and purposes, when we’re talking about HTML and text, there’s no such thing as ‘taking something down,’ since the Web is cached. both temporarily (at least) by search engines, and permanently by archive.org’s Way-Back-Machine (and who knows who or what else). Surely it’s just a matter of time before page’s/site’s/search result’s histories will be just as at-our-fingertips as the current versions of them are now. This is what I was talking about in my post called “The Age of Irreversible Statements?” which you can read here:
http://andrewapeterson.wordpress.com/2007/11/03/the-age-of-irreversible-statements/
I’m bringing up this idea for anyone involved (or just reading), that doesn’t yet realize this about the Web. And I should add, I completely believe that it’s only a matter of time before what is true now for text/HTML becomes true for pictures, video, audio etc. The only thing preventing media from being cached the way text is, is the cost of storage which is falling like a rock and will probably become ‘free’ very soon.

2. I don’t think it is ethical to post email correspondences on the Web without the permission of both parties, unless you remove all connections to anything tangible. The party’s First Name should be removed, not just the Last Name. Even then, it is a bridge-burning move, as you’re violating the trust (albeit assumed trust in this case) between you. Imagine if I had a ton of emails from you about all kinds of dealings, both personal and professional, and I decided to post them on my blog. “Come read every email Arin Crumley ever sent me!” …It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t do without your permission unless I wanted to intentionally exploit your trust. And if I did, you wouldn’t trust me anymore. If I removed your name from the emails, I don’t think you’d be able to call it slander or defamation or whatever else, but someone else might still be able to easily figure out who I was corresponding with in the emails. And on the Web, all it takes is for a third party to declare that the emails are between me and you and what would result would be similar in effect to if I had left your name in all along. So by posting this, name or not, you’re agreeing to have a little fight with this guy and you’re making it known that he can’t trust you.

3. About the video: I don’t think it is within an artist’s control what happens to a video after it’s captured by the audience or any other 3rd party. This is why at major performance venues, whether or not cameras are allowed during a performance is often explicitly stated. If an artist is worried about him/herself being captured on film, he/she needs to address that when it is happening. If this was arranged as a shoot of the whole performance and later one performer decided he/she doesn’t like the way he/she looks, sounds, whatever, I can sympathize with him/her. Artists like to have control over their presentation. But it really comes down to who agreed to what and with whom. Clearly, there’s no way any of the performers were unaware of the taping. If you made an agreement with the performer in question to allow him/her to sign off on it before you put it online, then I think you should honor that. If the agreement was as simple as you being there taping while the performer performed, I think the performer basically agreed to it by not asking you not to film. It’s not like this was a hidden camera situation which could make the performer think he/she was safe from publicity.

4. All that said, I think you have it a little backwards. I think you should leave the video up and take down the emails. IMHO I think you should leave the performer’s name out of the title of the video if that’s what the permormer wants, even though it’s a naive desire on performer’s part. If you really want to leave the emails up to make a point about where we are with media and the web, rights, ethics, yada yada, I suggest deleting his/her entire name, and replacing it with “[redacted]” or something. Why make enemies [worse]? In the description/text that is with the video, link here and update that post, inserting a quick mention of the fact that that particular performer asked to not be named, or just use “[redacted]“.

Suggesting it’s questionable to have posted the correspondence is a pretty valid point. If you look at my categories I’ve got one called, “Virtual Film School” that this post is part of. So I do think this is a helpful discussion. Also while I knew the detective work wasn’t impossible, I made sure to not include any links to his music in this post or his full name. After all, his original complaint was that when people searched his full name material was appearing that he wasn’t happy about.

And in terms of the getting his first name wrong, thanks for catching that. I’ve just changed that. And the spelling errors, darn again, I used the spelling on the flyer which I think may have also been wrong. I’ll change those when I get your email. *Update (they’ve been changed)

I think everything should be a wiki. I’d love it if video was even a wiki. So a musician could just pull the clips they liked from my raw footage I posted and in a few seconds make their own version of the video from the raw footage I posted. And if I don’t have time to double cross reference all of my tags, it’s no big deal, those who float through and know can just correct it.

But we are dealing with a semi-developed system. So lets all hope that by the time we all learn what we are doing this platform we hope to be creating on also matures.

I agree with you that we are at a painful growth point with media and the web. Especially with all of the new tools for syndication and searching, once something is posted somewhere, it is, very quickly, everywhere.

This becomes even more complicated in this case, where the performing artist, is not the creator of the video being posted.

I’m not sure I have a complete opinion on this just yet… but there are a few points I know for sure. Arin, you will forgive me if I just mention a few things which offend me about your posting.

Bringing the transcripts of private communication onto your blog (i am assuming without the persons permission) is in poor taste. Where as with video of a public performance, you can make the argument that a performer was creating content to be shared with the general public, the same argument cannot be made for a private e mail. Obscuring the last name of the sender did nothing to protect this guy’s privacy. It took me about 10 minutes on google to find out who this was, and also to find and view the video in question…

Further, in your posted reply you call the poor guy [[Redacted]] when his name is [[Redacted]]… that’s careless and show’s an absolute lack of regard for this artist as a person.

On the subject of care, i would also just mention that another artist in your video is incorrectly identified (i’ll let you know who privately if you’d like to fix it), and a second has her last name misspelled. This might seem trivial, but, if you are going to be posting this stuff with tags and with the intent of helping artists to promote themselves (which is a noble goal), attention to these kinds of details is important both on a practical level and to show a symbolic respect for the co-creators of the content you are producing.

Yes, some people are not yet comfortable with the wonderfully messy, complicated, multi-faceted, free-for-all that the internet is becoming. But, while society is adjusting I think its important that those at the vanguard of the movement tread with respect and care. If we end up being perceived as assholes, its really not going to help move anything forward.

I look forward to future conversations on this topic.

With respectful candor,

Dorian