Posted by Mark & Mary Ann Weiss on 08/14/07 06:56

> > I knew him for the same amount of time.
>
> No Mark, you have *not* known me for the same amount
> of time, nor nearly to the same extent as Bill Davis knows
> me. Bill and I know each other on a face-to-face basis; we
> have broken bread and shared drinks together frequently.
> Yet you and I have never met. I have spoken with you just
> once, by telephone, and that was ten years ago.

We're on opposite coasts, so naturally, it's impossible for us to have an
in-person relationship. What I meant was that I've known you for that length
of time. How you interpret that is your perogative.


> > I was interviewed by Chris in 1997, when he was operating a
> > pirate radio station in San Marcos, known as KIND Radio.
>
> I have never "operated a pirate radio station," nor have I ever
> operated any type of radio station in my life. From April 1997
> to August 2000, I was one of about 75 volunteer programmers
> who put two hours a week into an LPFM radio station known
> in San Marcos as Micro Kind Radio. I had a weekly two-hour
> talk show on Kind Radio, but I did not operate the station. Kind
> Radio was operated by the Hays County Guardian, a local
> alternative media printed publication. While I fondly remember
> Kind Radio and while I'm very proud of my admittedly limited
> participation there, the fact is that I had absolutely no say
> nor any involvement in how it was operated.

Well that's quite a different tact from the one you took in 1997. Your
boasting back then sure made it sound like you ran the station. But then
maybe, by proxy, if you ran the paper that ran that station.


> > However, it becomes problematic when two or more
> > individuals use his board as a forum to libel my name.
>
> Sounds like a paranoid fantasy, since your name doesn't
> even appear on any forum at DV Info Net -- a simple search
> for your name will readily reveal that there are no returns
> for "Mark Weiss" anywhere: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/search.php

And how could it? You won't let me post anything in the forum!
It's NOT paranoia. Let me quote Douglas Spotted Eagle's post pertaining to
my tests:

"The person that published that "scientific examination" of the audio on the
V1 had purchased a greymarket cam that had a problem. He was tweaked because
he had no warranty and thusly developed an issue with Sony. This was one
area in which he had some knowledge, and therefore published the "data.""

In the above statement, he has evaded and untruthfully misrepresented the
fact that I have tested TWO V1Us and both of them have identical response
curves. The second one was purchased from B&H, definately NOT a grey market
seller--and DSE knows that. His contempt for me is so strong that he has
simply forgotten the content of my e-mails to him about testing more than
one camera.


> DV Info Net maintains a very strict policy against using
> any of our boards to flame, libel or slander any person,
> whether they're a member of the site or not. On the very
> rare occasion where it does happen, we deal with such
> content immediately by withdrawing it from public view,
> and in most cases, closing the account of the offending
> party. You have *not* been libeled at DV Info Net.

But I have been the target of false accusations by DSE on DVinfo.


> > It is only reasonable that I should be able to
> > respond and refute these absurd claims.
>
> No that is not at all reasonable. DV Info Net never has
> and never will exist for that purpose -- such public battles
> of personality are more in the realm of usenet. It is only
> reasonable that if you discover a suspected case of libel
> on my site, you should bring it to my attention immediately
> so that it can be evaluated and withdrawn from public view.
> You have no expectation whatsoever to use my web site as
> your own personal battleground. I won't allow such a thing.

Refuting false claims is not a flame war. It is simply presenting facts. You
folks are so caught up in your little "club of the isles" over there that
you simply don't have room for truth.


> > Then the guy goes over to DVinfo and continues to spout
> > lies about me. I informed Chris that I didn't appreciate
> > someone using another board that I have no dealings with,
> > do libel my name and asked him in a rather firm manner to
> > remove or edit the thread. He got huffy on me ...
>
> Well of course I got huffy -- in your opening email you
> threatened to sue me! I don't respond well to that, not
> at all; I don't suspect that anybody would. If you had
> simply brought the matter to my attention peaceably,
> especially given our previous acquaintance, then I would
> have promptly accommodated you. However, since you chose
> to immediately threaten legal action against me, my hands
> were tied with regard to that thread remaining in public
> view until I could consult my attorney. What complicated
> that situation even more was your strange response to a
> similar occurrence at the AVS Forum, in which they removed
> from public view a similar thread which contained offending
> material, only to find you posting a copy of it (a violation
> of their copyright) on your own site! But I don't see how
> any of this is relevant, as the thread in question on DV
> Info Net was in fact withdrawn from public view (due to
> our policy, not due to your pathetic threat to sue).

You do realize how serious that matter was, don't you? Frankly, all of the
mess that Ken Ross has caused over on AVSForum and on DVinfo has caused me
to reconsider my decision not to pursue legal action against him.

The moderator at AVSForum was a completely irrational person. Any rational
reader can sense that by reading the archived thread that I captured before
he deleted it to cover up his own silliness. I'm not the only one who holds
this opinion of both Ken and that moderator. I've received numerous e-mails
from moderators of other forums/mailing lists that I'm involved with, who
are NOT impressed with those two and how they handled things.


> > DVinfo and others are beholden to the camera manufacturers and
> > as such are self-censored so as not to upset their monetary stipend.
>
> This claim is of course a ridiculous fabrication. From its
> inception up to today, DV Info Net has never received any
> monetary stipend whatsoever from Sony or any other
> camera manufacturer... and even if it actually did exist,
> it certainly wouldn't affect our editorial content. That's a
> matter of ethics, integrity and pride.

Perhaps it is DSE who is protecting his own relationship with Sony then.
Sony lets him "play" with new models before they are released to the public.
He may even be getting some of his equipment donated or at significant
discounts from Sony. Of course this is speculation, but his seemingly
irrational ignorance of glaring problems that members of your own forum are
starting to notice on their own, seems intentional, not accidental. I smell
corporate politics in this one.


> > Since the guy from AVSForum carried his beef with me
> > into DVinfo, a forum at which I was never a member,
> > he has tainted the waters permanently for me,
>
> Nope -- you did that all by yourself, primarily in your
> communication with me by email. He had nothing to do
> with it except to alert me to the coming storm.

Sorry if I offended you by stating that I reserved the right to sue if the
material wasn't removed.


> > caused one of their moderators who is respected in
> > the industry to blanketly dismiss anything I say,
> > as a total farce,
>
> That's because most everything you say *is* a total
> farce, like the bulk of your bizarre claims about me
> which I'm having to respond to here.

Now here is where I think we stopped communicating.


> > and as a result, my account remains languishing,
> > un-activated, so I can't post in defense of, or to dispute
> > the lies coming from the individual who uses his good
> > reputation to smear others.
>
> Lies, reputations, disputes, defense and smearing are
> not topics of conversation on DV Info Net. If any content
> there is thought to be objectionable, the proper course of
> action is to simply click the "report bad post" button
> (located to the left of every post). An active account
> isn't required in order to report a bad post. That function
> is available to all visitors including unregistered guests.
> The report goes to the top forum moderators, where they
> evaluate the complaint and act on it if necessary. The
> one thing we don't do (never have, never will), is let it
> drag out into a big online battle between personalities.

No, they shouldn't be, and at the same time DVinfo shouldn't be a platform
for smearing my reputation or my scientific and carefully-executed tests on
cameras. I invited everyone who owns a V1U to perform the test
themselves--the software is available in a free edition. Show me up for the
fool and farce that you think I am.
I was unaware that I could report a bad post, especially when that post
comes from one of DVinfo's own moderators. Sort of like calling the police
to report a police officer for bad behavior. ;-/


> > I had a long chat with Chris about that, and he chooses
> > to advise me not to join the forum, accusing me of being
> > a copyright violator, simply because I employed the journalistic
> > "fair use" privilage to display some frame grabs from some
> > publicly-available non-commercial footage, as examples of
> > typical picture quality from a particular camera, which, BTW,
> > I now own.
>
> Some of the creators of those images, a few of whom are
> members of my site, made the valid complaint that not only
> had you redistributed their work without their permission
> (not to mention without at least proper credit), but also the
> unathorized copies which you've redistributed are noticeably
> degraded from their original form. There was some initial
> conjecture that you had perhaps purposefully degraded those
> images, since you had made your own crass accusation that
> another fellow had purposefully misrepresented his; which
> automatically lowers you to the same level of culpability
> for the same thing that you accuse others of doing.

Now here is where you are patently wrong. I did some research following our
last e-mail, and it turns out that I can use up to 60 seconds of video from
copyrighted material in a review about that material. It's called "Fair Use"
and it's the law. I was well within legal rights, as I used 1/30 of a second
from footage shot by various consumers that was posted to the public
internet. These were not even commercial videos. My use was purely for
academic, journalistic purposes, as a comparison of what the consumer can
expect from the various cameras.
As to the fact that I wasn't able to attribute the images to their shooters,
many of them had been collected over a 2 years span, from diverse sources,
and at that time, I was viewing them for my own edification. I had no idea
that I would one day grab a frame from each clip and display it on my
camcorder comparison page, which is a hobby page, and not a commercial
profit-making venture. Even so, I have done nothing illegal or immoral by
doing so. When you post content to the public internet, you have no
reasonable expectation of privacy or that your content won't be played or
displayed somewhere else.


> But ultimately it was decided that the degradation you
> introduced into that stolen material was just a result of
> your incompetence with the editing software. Regardless,
> those folks on my site whose copyright you violated were
> not very happy about what you did with their images, so it
> was out of respect for them that I told you not to bother
> joining our forum. They would have eaten you alive, and I
> have better things to do than to police such a mess.

I don't believe that competence or the lack thereof played any role.
My own HV20 (yes, I had to buy one) and the time I put in discovering its
features, revealed the source of the soft images: Cinema mode. That setting
reduces the contrast and applies a blur to the overall image. I shot some
normal and cimena footage and put stills on my site, demonstrating the vast
difference it causes in picture detail.
The other contributing factor was that Vegas itself is incompetent and
handling images. I've discovered numerous quality issues with footage I'm
getting out of Vegas, and the problems it's caused have spurred me to build
a new workstation capable of running Premiere Pro CS3. Vegas has some
shortcomings, but I suppose that's the cost of being able to edit HDV on a
PC without SSE2 instruction set in the CPU.
Bottom line is, Ken, because he was losing the argument on AVSforum, chose
to go into ad hominem attack mode and sick the moderator on my account --WHO
GAVE ME EXACTLY FIVE MINUTES TO EXPLAIN MYSELF AND DELETED MY ACCOUNT WHILE
I WAS WRITING THAT EXPLANATION. In plain English, what an asshole he is.
I've heard a few other complaints about AVSForum, for their banning
discussion of a certain brand of subwoofer there, so I see it is endemic to
that venue.


> > He has the audacity to lecture me on the law, when he was
> > the biggest law-breaker himself, violating FCC regulations
> > by operating and willfully refusing to shut down a pirate
> > radio station
>
> Once again... I did not operate Kind Radio; therefore I was
> never in any position whatsoever to "shut it down." At no time
> were any of Kind's volunteer programmers (myself included) ever
> named or sought or otherwise indicated in any of the FCC's
> dismal and continuously unsuccessful attempts to quell our
> Freedom of Speech. And just for the record... none of the
> volunteer programmers at Kind Radio were ever charged with
> breaking *any* law. So, no we were not lawbreakers.

Okay, so today you say you were not an operator there. What can I say? It's
your word.


> > when confronted by federal agents.
>
> The operators of Micro Kind Radio were *never* confronted
> by "federal agents," at least never in person; and what limited
> contact the FCC had with Kind Radio was conducted via certified
> mail and in San Antonio, where Kind Radio's operators filed a
> lawsuit against the FCC and took them to court. But this is all
> fairly well documented at
http://www.diymedia.net/feature/micro/f091200.htm

Again, fine. Chalk it up to my aging-induced memory loss.


> > Not to mention the copyright violations he commited by
> > broadcasting commercially-recorded music on KIND Radio
> > without paying ASCAP fees.
>
> I had a two-hour talk show at noon on Fridays. What little
> music I actually played during that block was submitted by
> mostly local area artists such as Carolyn Wonderland, Trish
> Murphy, Terri Hendrix and others who brought their music to
> us. The vast majority of Kind Radio's rich, diverse programming
> came from anything *but* commercially produced ASCAP labels;
> most of the music played on that station was either locally
> homegrown or remotely obscure, but for the most part pretty
> much all of it was underground or well outside of the ASCAP
> domain. By design, Kind Radio didn't broadcast "popular" music.

Fine. Your word, once again. Not what I got from your posts on
alt.radio.pirate in 1997 though.


> > He is a coniver and a slippery fellow, who speaks legalese
> > terminology and pretends to know the law, when in fact, his
> > closet is full of skeletons.
>
> My happy experience during my time as a volunteer programmer
> at Micro Kind Radio -- the friends I made there, the support that
> the city gave us, and everything I learned from that time -- is no
> skeleton in my closet. However my interview with you from
> 1997 has just become one.

Oh? How is that so?


> I speak "legalese terminology" only when confronted with it,
> such as the hostility with which you first brought it to me,
> in your initial threat to sue me. As for being "a conniving
> and slippery fellow," well thank you for very much the ad
> hominem attack... it is indeed all you can muster when
> you truly have nothing valid left to stand on. It takes one
> to know one, is what I say.

You demonstrate your skills as that slippery fellow quite well, I must add.
;-)


> > I didn't want to say all that, but his decision to ignore
> > my e-mail requests to activate my month-old account
>
> Request -- singular, not plural. I had *one* email from you
> about it which came in yesterday, which was a Sunday; I'm
> typically away from the computer as much as possible on
> weekends. You can consider this as my reply to your email.

Request #1 was the initial registration. It is expected that activation
occurs within 24-48 hours. Request #2 was that e-mail.
And I'll consider my reply. But also consider that by disallowing me to
represent myself in your forum when someone is spewing false information
about me or my testing methodology, you are making yourself a party to the
offending action and as such, subject to possible legal action on my part.


> > My beef with Chris is that he is "pre-banning" me, when
> > I have commited no bannable offense on his board, due to
> > not being a posting member. It's sort of like "Minority
> > Report" where they arrest you for crimes you have not
> > yet commited.
>
> A private club with a strict dress code doesn't have to
> go through the motions of letting you in just so it can
> kick you out. It can simply point to your shoes and deny
> your entrance at the door. It happens all the time in the
> real world. You're a fool if you think you have any "right"
> to get in.

No more right than the next anonymous application. You've prejudiced against
me, on the word of a couple of quacks, one of whom just happened to get
lucky and win a couple of technical Grammies, which IMHO, I think were
unwarranted, if they had anything to do with the way he records audio.


> Prior to your registration at DV Info Net you were thrown out
> of the AVS Forum and banned, you've threatened to sue me,
> you've engaged in hostile ad hominem attacks upon members
> of my forum and other people, you've redistributed degraded
> versions of copyrighted material belonging to members of my
> forum and other people without their permission, and you've
> demonstrated a woeful lack of understanding of some very
> basic and key concepts of digital video technology, so no,
> I don't believe I'll let you post on my site at this time.

I point out that I was banned by an unreasonable idiot, who has no business
being a moderator at all. Your paranoid belief that I threatened to sue you
is rather extreme. I presented you with a standard request to remedy a
possible libel situation on your forum. As a standard part of that
procedure, I gave you the courtesey of notifiying you that failure to do so
MAY result in legal action. I did not say that I was GOING to sue you. When
you get a tax bill from the government, it almost always states what their
remedy is if you don't comply--it's not a notice of arrest or asset seizure.


> > At any rate, as far as I'm concerned, my respect
> > for the two of them has dropped into the basement.
>
> Likewise, that feeling is now completely mutual.

'Glad we now have a better understanding of eachother.


> > Shame on them for their "selective morality".
>
> And shame on you for your "selective intelligence."

Now I've been guilty of selective ignorance, but never before in a field in
which I am experienced with on a professional level. But do go on with your
ad hominem attacks.


> Mark Weiss, you can kiss my Bill of Rights. Good

Isn't that what you said to the FCC openly and publicly in November of 1997?
:-)

> luck with your one-man crusade against Sony. You've
> got the rest of the internet at your disposal (except
> the AVS Forum, where you're banned), but you sure
> as hell are not going to use my web site to grind your
> broken ax.

It's soon to expand. More and more people are discovering on their own, what
a joke the Sony HVR-V1U is. Some on this newsgroup have already dismissed it
because of the garbage picture it produces. Others, even on your board, have
had some epiphanies with regard to how poor the sound quality and lack of
bass response is. It's slowly coming out. You and Douglas can't suppress the
truth forever.

And folks are free to read the whole thread that got me banned on AVSForum
here:

http://aamserver.dnsalias.com/basspig/AVSPM.htm



> (My apologies to the regulars here for my brief
> intrusion, but this was an attempted attack upon
> my character and unfortunately too many people will
> blindly believe anything they read on usenet. That's
> the reason why I created DV Info Net in the first
> place; to get away from such malice. Hopefully for
> your sake and mine, I won't have to return. Best
> regards, and a hearty thanks to Bill Davis.)
>
> Chris Hurd
> DV Info Net
> San Marcos, TX

And thank you for clarifying your position in this matter. It's really a
shame, but then again, I don't give a damn, as long as your people don't
keep falsifying my test data and hurling false accusations about me.

Good day sir.



--



Mark & Mary Ann Weiss



VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair - 15,000 Watts of Driving Stereo!
Business sites at:
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

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