![]() ![]() All of these things intensify and flare up in direct correlation to Andy featuring me on his page.” “My family members have been threatened in other states. “I’ve been maced and shot at with frozen paintball guns, issued death and rape threats, generally prevented from doing my job as a photojournalist, and also harassed at my place of work during the day,” she added. They get harassed when he does this.”īoth women say that they have been inundated with harassing comments from Ngo’s followers online when they objected to his use of their work, and suspect that abuse they have been subjected to offline is related to his description of them as “antifa videographers.” Morgan told me via email that while reporting she has “been recognized and targeted by far right extremist groups, primarily the Proud Boys.” “The really important thing,” Zerner told me, “is the negative consequences. “ABC can’t just take NBC’s video and say, ‘This is the news,’” Zerner said.įor Morgan and Lewis, Zerner said, the harm inflicted by Ngo’s use of their footage to report on this protest and others in Portland for his 940,000 followers is not simply about the decreased value their videos might have for news outlets they sell images to it is also about the abuse they suffer from Ngo’s rabid, far-right fans when he draws attention to them as left-wing journalists. Larry Zerner, a Los Angeles copyright lawyer who is the lead counsel for Morgan and Lewis, told me in a phone interview that what Ngo had done, by reporting on the October 1 protest using his clients’ video to illustrate his tweets, was no different than one television network illegally using a rival network’s video in a news report, without permission or payment. Photo: Internet ArchiveĪ screenshot of a tweet posted by Melissa Lewis on Oct. Photo: Grace Morgan, via TwitterĪ screenshot of a tweet posted by Andy Ngo on Oct. Ngo appears to have used the videos shot by Morgan and Lewis simply to report what happened at the protest to his followers, sounding more like a news anchor than a commentator.Ī screenshot of a tweet posted by Grace Morgan on Oct. However, comparing the text of the tweets Morgan and Lewis sent from the October 1 protest to the new captions Ngo wrote for their videos the next day, it is hard to discern any commentary. Dozens of Ngo’s tweets include re-captioned video of protests in Portland shot by Morgan or Lewis.Īs word of their lawsuit against Ngo spread, many of his supporters predicted that he would prevail in federal court based on the “fair use” doctrine, which can make it legal to use copyrighted material if the original work has been transformed into something new, often by adding reporting, commentary, or criticism. Many of them complain that Ngo regularly mischaracterizes their work by sharing their videos with false or misleading captions. Among those users are journalists and activists who are sympathetic to the protests against police brutality, racism, and far-right extremism they record. Research shared by antifascist activists shows that Ngo has posted more than 3,700 tweets that include video clips originally uploaded to Twitter by other users. ![]() Photo: Precious Child via Internet Archive The attacker was quickly identified as a far-right activist named Aaron Simmons, but many people who saw the video framed by Ngo’s misleading caption wrongly blamed antifascists for the violence.Ī screenshot of a tweet sent by Andy Ngo in July that included video shot by the activist and livestreamer Precious Child. The only sign that the video was taken from another account is a small line of type Twitter adds automatically, with the username of the original uploader and a link to their account.įor example, in July, Ngo used this technique to tweet video first uploaded to Twitter by the left-wing livestreamer Precious Child that showed a masked attacker clubbing a documentary filmmaker in the head during an anti-trans protest in Los Angeles. The result is that users like Ngo can send out tweets in which other people’s videos are embedded, but without the original captions, even from accounts that have blocked them. Delivered to you.īut Ngo appears to have taken advantage of a technical shortcut in the Twitter app that allows users to copy the source code for video clips embedded in other people’s tweets, and then paste that code into their own tweets.
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