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February 2020
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College Student Gets Thrown On The Ground And A Gun Pointed At His Head For Committing The Crime Of 'Taking A Selfie While Black'

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The latest crime to result in civil litigation is "taking a selfie while black." Doing so in Illinois gets your face pushed in the snow, a knee in your back, and a gun held to your head. (via Simple Justice)Jaylan Butler was traveling back from a swim meet in South Dakota with the EIU swim team. During a break at an East Moline rest stop, the bus driver suggested Butler take a selfie in front of the "BUCKLE UP, IT'S THE LAW" sign at the rest stop.This somehow prompted all law enforcement hell to break loose. From Butler's lawsuit [PDF]:

Mr. Butler took a photo of himself smiling in front of the sign, and then began walking back toward the bus.[...]After only a few steps, several law enforcement vehicles with flashing lights suddenly pulled up in front of him.[...]When Mr. Butler saw the law enforcement vehicles pull up, he was surprised and confused, but knew what to do. He instantly stopped, put his hands up, dropped the cell phone that was in his hand, and dropped to his knees.[...]Defendants exited the vehicles with their firearms pointed at Mr. Butler. At least one Defendant was carrying what appeared to be a rifle.Defendants shouted at Mr. Butler: “Get down!” and “Don’t fucking move! Stay right there!” Mr. Butler kept his hands up and complied with Defendants’ orders.Defendants forced Mr. Butler to lie face down on the snowy ground.On information and belief, Defendants Staes, Asquini, Pena, and additional Defendants held Mr. Butler down while Defendant Bush handcuffed his arms behind his back.At least one Defendant had his knee pressed into Mr. Butler’s back, and at least one Defendant was pressing down on Mr. Butler’s neck.Another Defendant was squatting down in front of Mr. Butler. He put his handgun against Mr. Butler’s forehead and said, “If you keep moving, I’m going to blow your fucking head off.”
This impromptu show of force somehow involved officers from three different law enforcement agencies. The whole thing played out in front of several witnesses and no officer bothered to explain why they suspected a student in an EIU jacket to be worthy of guns-out force deployment while standing a few feet away from an EIU bus manned by an EIU bus driver.In the absence of any explanations from the involved agencies, this appears to be intra-agency cooperation at its worst, where every officer has the same bias towards black males.Everything about this gets worse when you read Barb Ickes' article for the Rock Island Dispatch-Argus. (We'll assume she did not write the unfortunate headline that tries to exonerate everyone currently being sued.) Not a single officer or official can explain what happened or why it happened. There is not a coherent answer to be found in this report.The Rock Island Sheriff's Department's lawyer denies the two Does listed as defendants were involved in this incident. The attorney offered no comment about the two named Rock Island deputies. According to the attorney, the Rock Island officers were called in to assist Henry County Sheriff's deputies. This assertion was not backed by the Henry County Sheriff.
Henry County Sheriff Kerry Loncka looked up records from Feb. 24 and said no reports were filed by Henry County deputies.
I guess a guns-out stop that results only in Constitutional violations isn't worth noting. The sheriff speculated it might have had something to do with a report of a driver shooting at another vehicle but the suspect went into Rock Island county before crashing his car and the sheriff had no further details.The Rock Island Sheriff was also mostly unaware of what happened that night.
Rock Island County Sheriff Gerry Bustos said he knew little about the incident but said he was not, as the officers who arrested Butler are said to have claimed, responding to an active-shooter event that night.
The only thing even close to an "active shooter" on the books that night was a call about a 10-year-old playing with a toy gun down by the railroad tracks, which was resolved by a deputy speaking to the child's parents.The Henry County Sheriff also said his deputies asked for Rock Island's assistance after being asked by the Illinois State Police to assist in whatever it was that no involved agency can clearly state they were combining forces to handle. The State Police have refused to offer any comment on this incident. And it's now stonewalling requests for information about its involvement in the arrest/assault of Jaylan Butler.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records that would explain what police were responding to when they mistakenly took Butler into custody, a FOIA officer responded that no information could be supplied without the name and date of birth of the person arrested.Despite objections that the FOIA request sought only incident reports related to the events of Feb. 24, the FOIA officer did not respond. A public information officer for the Illinois State Police said last week that she would try to help provide information "ASAP." Five days later, no information was provided.
Even if we assume the drive-by shooting that appears to be a post facto rationalization for the treatment of Butler is actually true, it still makes no sense. Why would officers assume a person wearing an EIU jacket standing near an EIU bus full of other students wearing EIU jackets is the shooter they were looking for? Why were they at the rest stop in the first place? This speculation does us no good, but the shittiest part of this is that we shouldn't need to be engaging in speculation in the first place. The involved agencies should have had an answer for what happened here, but between the three of them, not a single person could explain what happened here, much less why it happened.We're not going to get a real answer from these agencies, not even under oath. What it looks like is probably what is, as Scott Greenfield explains.
No matter how you twist this, when the deputy put the one black guy on the ground and uttered the words taught in every police academy everywhere, “If you move, I’ll blow your fucking (expletive added) head off,” there was no excuse, rational or not, credible or not, offered. They couldn’t even be bothered to make up a lie. Maybe, in response to Butler’s suit, they’ll get another chance to come up with something to at least pretend it wasn’t pure, unadulterated racism.
No officer is going to testify that they saw a black male and made their move, presuming they'd find something to justify the stop and use of force later. But, in the deafening absence of any explanation that fits the most minimal definition of the word "credible," it's not at all far-fetched to assume the officers think "black" is the same thing as "suspicious."

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posted at: 12:00am on 20-Feb-2020
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No, Disney Probably Didn't Infringe A Unicorn Van Artist's Copyright, But It Would Have Sued If The Roles Were Reversed

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If there is ever a Copyright Protectionist Hall of Fame built, it should probably be constructed on the grounds of one Disney theme park or another. As regular readers here will already know, Disney is notoriously aggressive in its enforcement of intellectual property generally, and in copyright specifically. Hell, the 1998 CTEA, which extended the terms of copyright, is more commonly referred to as "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act." Our pages are absolutely littered with stories of Disney bullying others over copyrights, often times to ridiculous lengths.Well, the shoe is on the other foot in this latest story. You may have seen ads recently for a forthcoming Pixar movie, Onward, which features two elves that take a road trip in a colorful van to try to meet and speak with their dead father. Well, one tattoo artist from California, named Cicely Daniher, is claiming that the depiction of that van represents copyright infringement of her own quite colorful van.

Two weeks ago, Daniher filed a lawsuit against the animation studio for copyright infringement, saying Pixar misled her after the company reportedly requested to rent her Vanicorn for a company outing. Now, a van she says is identical to her own will appear in the forthcoming animated film, “Onward.”According to court documents shared by the Hollywood Reporter, Jane Clausen, an employee of Pixar, inquired about the rental for a “one day music festival/activity day for Pixar employees and families” on Sept. 4, 2018.“Your van would just be a show piece and not used in any way other than a visual prop,” Clausen wrote to Daniher. “Are you able to send me some additional photos of the van? We’ve only seen the side, which just blew us away!”Daniher agreed to rent the Vanicorn for a “confidential sum of money.” But eight months later, she noticed something strange.
What was strange is that the van in Onward shares similarities to her own van. See, the reason Pixar staff wanted to use her van to begin with is that it is painted purple with an artistic representation of a unicorn on the side. The van in Onward shares many of these qualities.Are those two vans similar? Of course they are! So is Disney/Pixar guilty of copyright infringement? Well...no, probably not. This again is a matter of the idea and expression dichotomy in copyright law. The purpose of that part of the law is to limit copyright protection to specific expression and not mere ideas and themes. For instance, a 1 to 1 copy of Daniher's design on Pixar's cartoon van would likely be infringing. The concept of a purple van with a unicorn on the side of it is, however, not protectable. In fact, it's nearly in trope territory.Now, to be clear, there may be a contract law issue here. And, even if not, Daniher's side of the story does make Pixar's actions sound really, really shitty.
Speaking on behalf of his client, attorney Conor Corcoran told SFGATE that the film’s producer, Kori Rae, called Daniher on June 3, 2019, to apologize for the misunderstanding. Rae apparently admitted Pixar intentionally did not tell her that they intended to use her van because, at the time, the film had not yet been given a title. For that reason, they believed they could not have Daniher sign a non-disclosure agreement, so they stuck with the rental paperwork. Via the legal complaint, Daniher says the contract she signed “explicitly prohibits” the use of any type of visual representation of the Vanicorn for any purpose other than the event itself. The following December, Corcoran registered the vehicle with the Copyright Office.“It’s unbelievable,” he told SFGATE over the phone on Wednesday afternoon. “She created that van to cathartically get out of a bad marriage, and Pixar took her van and created it into a vehicle for two boys to find their dead father. We’re gonna have our day in court.”
All well and good, but this still probably isn't copyright infringement. I imagine Disney will argue the same in court.But what if the parties and actions in this story were reversed? Imagine if Pixar had created its cartoon van first and then Daniher had painted her van? Now imagine that she did vehicle painting and wraps for a living, and sold her similar design? Is there even a modicum of doubt that Disney would be screaming "copyright infringement" in every single courthouse it could?Of course it would. It's what Disney does. Which will make it entertaining to watch Disney argue the opposite in court.

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posted at: 12:00am on 20-Feb-2020
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