(Screenshot image taken from the YouTube account of 'The Jimmy Dore Show')
You would think that having a guest on the channel would improve the quality of Dore’s videos since it would offer another voice who’s usually more knowledgeable about the issues that Dore fancies to discuss. Typically the guest commentators offer a more rational, researched perspective in contrast to Dore’s typical passionate, unfactual, rhetorical talking points. And yet in this video the presence of respected journalist Chris Hedges fails to offer such a counterbalance. Not that this is necessarily Hedges’ fault, given the rather awkward way the video starts.
This video is a rather restrained, modest, 7 and a half minute clip that is still as aimless and wildly unanchored as the longer videos that Dore tends to do. Supposedly the topic for this video is Internet censorship, but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to deduce that from the first minute which features many of Dore’s more popular broadsides that appear ad nauseam on the channel.
A good example of this is his contempt for people on Twitter pushing ‘evidence free conspiracy theories’. Every time I hear this phrase from Dore, I can’t stop myself from pondering about all the times that Dore himself has expressed a claim on his channel without providing any supposed evidence. Surely others see the hypocrisy in how Dore holds others to higher standards than he holds himself. Even within this video Dore mentions that:
It’s already been proved scientifically that just a minor algorithm change by Google can move polling points by 3, 4, 5, 6 points, as many as they want.
Ok, so now my question is this, where is the evidence for this idea? It’s certainly not found within the confines of this video, that’s for sure. And if such evidence does actually exist, why wouldn’t you bother to make some sort of reference or allusion to the work? Would it be so hard for Dore to add a minor point that this is based off a paper published by a couple of psychologists from the American Institute for Behavioral Research, or to even post a link to the source, like so? What’s the point of criticizing others for bad journalism, when you show no qualms about engaging in the same lazy, sloppy work yourself?
But perhaps the most clumsy aspect of Dore’s introduction was the way it was staged cinematically. After seeing the short ‘swinging sign’ clip that opens every Dore video, we immediately see Hedges on a video conference with Dore, with Hedges remaining in view as Dore does a 75 second spiel to start the video. This may be a minor complaint, but it’s not necessary to show footage of a guest until you’re ready for them to speak. From a pure style perspective that may have been preferred. Of course I still found it rather amusing to hear Jimmy talk about Hedges getting throttled after watching his guest nod passively and patiently wait for over a minute to be granted an opportunity to speak.
Still given this lead-in, I felt as if Hedges was ever so slightly prodded into continuing this argumentative approach and in doing so he made some horribly awful comments. Let’s start with the following statement.
They’ve actually gone after Michael Moore you know for this film that he did.
Given the context that Dore establishes in the beginning of the video, the ‘they’ in question here are Silicon Valley billionaires. Dore prefaces this discussion with the notion that the owners of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so forth are the ones who regulate speech on the Internet. This notion isn’t quite true. The reality of how Internet censorship works is far more complex than what Dore will ever suggest and here it makes what Hedges claim to be slightly incorrect. In regards to the actual censorship of Planet of the Humans, there is no ‘they’. The truth of the matter is that neither social media companies, nor other members of America’s corporate oligarchy, nor even YouTube itself are to blame for the fact that Michael Moore’s film got removed. Rather this was the work of a British photographer with a dubious understanding of fair use, who was able to take advantage of the weaknesses in US copyright law in order to advance his own aims.
In taking a deeper look at this controversy, the reason Moore’s film was removed was due to a claim of copyright infringement by British photographer Toby Smith. Footage shot by Smith for the short film Rare Earthenware was used in Moore’s film without Smith’s permission. It is clear from most of reporting on this issue that Smith did not like Planet of the Humans nor did he agree with the overall message of Moore’s film. First, one could argue on whether or not the 4-second clip would even contain the required creativity to constitute a valid infringement claim to begin with. It wouldn’t be completely absurd for a court to toss this out on the grounds of de minimis. Second, whether the inclusion of Smith’s work could constitute fair use, I ran across this rather bizarre line of thought, as reported in The Verge:
…makers of Rare Earthenware say it doesn’t constitute fair use because “the footage has been contorted to represent a pretty un-researched and for that reason rather dangerous narrative.”
WTF!?!. And look I’ll grant that Smith has a right to publicly express his critical opinion of Moore’s work and that he lives in the UK where the laws on copyright are different and there is no real application of fair use. But nonetheless this is not how fair use works. Fair use is not determined by whether or not the copyright holders approve of how their work is being used, nor should it be. If this was the case than fair use would be rendered as completely superfluous. The ‘four factors of fair use’ do not include any of the stuff that is contained within the quotation marks of the above quote. If Moore used a small clip of Smith’s work (which Smith has made available freely on the Internet), merely as stock footage then there is a decent fair use argument to be made here. I’ll be honest though, I have not watched Moore’s film and thus don’t want to make any firm declaration on whether or not this is fair use. Ultimately though due to how poorly copyright law has been crafted in the US, this may not matter.
As for why YouTube would choose to remove the film, this is largely due to a provision in US law commonly known as ‘Section 512’. This was passed as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act back in 1998. And yes, just to make a small clarification, neither Facebook, Twitter, nor YouTube where in existence when this law was passed. If you’re looking for people to blame for online censorship, place some of it at the feet of Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott and Bill Clinton for allowing Section 512 to become a law in its initial form. Under Section 512, a service platform like YouTube is not held liable for any copyright infringement on its site that it is not aware of. Now given how much content that YouTube hosts, I don’t have any problem with this part of the law. There is no way that YouTube could ever police internally all the potential cases of copyright infringement that occur on its site. However in order for YouTube to retain this liability shield it must quickly remove potentially infringing content whenever they are notified of it. So the question then becomes, what happens when a copyright holder sends YouTube a takedown notice over content that isn’t actually infringing? Pretty much the same thing that would happen if the takedown notice was valid. YouTube will still retain its liability shield if it takes down said content. Not only that but if it performs additional tasks it can secure additional liability from users over fraudulent claims of infringement. Such tasks include waiting a ‘minimum‘ of 10 days to restore access to the content in question. As for the claimants who request that non-infringing content be taken down, there are no real penalties that could threaten them, barring proof that they ‘knowingly’ submitted a false claim. This is usually a difficult thing to prove especially against people who may, for instance, publicly feign confusion over how the concept of fair use works. Copyright.gov has a really good overview of the DMCA takedown system and you can read the law for yourself here.
The end result of Section 512 is a system where ironically YouTube does not play the role of a censor, but rather is encouraged to stand aside and be a bystander in the censorship efforts of others. Let’s get our facts straight here. YouTube did not censor Michael Moore’s film, Toby Smith did. I understand the inclination to criticize YouTube for not supporting their users more and honestly some of this criticism is warranted. But let’s also acknowledge that legitimate copyright infringement does occur on the site and I can empathize with YouTube for favoring the simplicity of taking down everything as opposed to expending the effort to sort the all illegitimate claims from the legitimate ones. Section 512 allows service providers and distributors like YouTube an opportunity to extract themselves from any conflict involving copyright infringement, leaving only the holders and those who use the copyrighted work of others to resolve such issues. As alluded to with Hedges’ ‘outlier’ comment, this is a system that tends to favor wealthier, corporate copyright holders at the expense of more economically modest, independent content creators. However it doesn’t take much to be a copyright holder and ultimately this is a system that can be abused by many. The problem with Hedges’ initial foray into this topic is that someone who has achieved the cultural relevancy of Michael Moore is not the best example of an outlier, nor does the case of him being temporarily censored by an obscure British photographer properly convey the power imbalances of social media censorship. But none of this is as bad as Hedges’ claim that ‘it’s always the left that pays. It’s never the right’. I’m not entirely sure what Hedges is trying to say here, but it nonetheless comes across as pure bullshit. Section 512 does not discriminate in who is victimized by this law. Even President Trump can be victimized by Section 512. When Trump posted a video to social media following the murder of George Floyd, the video was removed from Twitter due to someone submitting a DMCA takedown request allegedly for the video footage that was showed in conjunction with Trump’s speech.
As for most of Hedges’ commentary regarding online censorship, it’s fairly clear that he is speaking contemporaneously and doesn’t quite have his thoughts well organized, given how much he stammers when speaking. The end result is a monologue that contained very little logical flow from one idea to the next and whose over-aching message was not easy to grasp. To illustrate this point further, see if you can decipher the main thrust of the following excerpt, which I’ll quote verbatim:
And so they seduce the left and the liberal class by censoring people especially that kind of liberal elite determines is extreme for whatever reason. Although I’ve been kind of amazed at the cheerleading that everybody, (and I’m talking about the left) has engaged in in essentially shutting down Michael Moore’s movie, getting it removed from YouTube. So it just shows that they don’t understand history, because they’re the target. I’ve been hit by these algorithms; you’ve been hit by these algorithms, so we already know.
I seriously don’t know what Hedges is trying to convey here, but let’s get one thing straight, in the case of Moore’s film or in Trump’s post-Floyd speech, neither were hit by algorithms. Rather they were attacked by people who simply disagreed with their speech. One of the biggest censorship issues that we face is the growing social pestilence whereby people encounter speech they don’t like with childish, petulant demands for it to be removed from public consciousness. You can call me crazy but I don’t believe that this desire is solely felt by those on the political left in America. I don’t believe that this desire is unique to those on the political right. I don’t believe this desire is unique to the employees of social media companies. I don’t believe that this desire is unique to the wealthy, nor to corporate copyright holders. How we deal with speech that we disagree with is something that needs to be seriously re-evaluated in our society. We should consider all the options available to us when we encounter what we might subjectively consider to be ‘bad speech’. If the information contained within Planet of the Humans is indeed inaccurate, than you have the right to call Michael Moore out for his bullshit. Why deny yourself the pleasure of doing such a thing in order to meekly engage in censorship which only serves to make you look like a villain and cast your adversaries as victims?
But societal attitudes are only part of the problem. The actual ideological base for our laws needs to be addressed as well. Capitalism in America has succeeded in establishing a construct whereby the content that one creates is not a product offering value for the benefit of society, but rather a commodity where one retains the rights of ownership in order to economically profit off of it. Copyright law is the result of people believing in such a right and on the surface this is not a nefarious notion, yet there are some dangers. When a society reduces a notion like speech to that of a mere commodity, there will always be censorship.
What I would desire to see in this video is a really thoughtful examination of both the underlying social forces and the actual instruments used in the exercise of oppressive censorship, and yet we get neither. What we get instead is nearly 5 minutes of rambling, contextless, generic, leftist propaganda, as Hedges aimlessly pontificates on everything from the internal security state to oligarchic oppression to class warfare to the vigilante, violent nature of American culture to Trump’s ineffectiveness as a leader. Honestly if you had a checklist full of progressive talking points, Hedges probably managed to hit most of them. What Hedges doesn’t offer though is any concrete, actionable proposals that could lead to more freedoms when it comes to online speech. Why not, for instance, use the Michael Moore incident to suggest reforms to Section 512 in order to deter the sending of bogus takedown requests? And for someone like Hedges who briefly flirted with running for a seat in the US Congress, to not suggest such things is something that he deserves valid criticism for. Hedges instead conceded to the modus operandi of Dore’s channel, which is to spew empty, pandering rhetoric.