Basejumper.com - archive

I was wondering what the BASE community might like to see changed for at least the BASE section of SkydivingMovies.com. I have a few ideas in my head, but I'm not a BASE jumper.

Would a very restrictive, BASE-jumper-only section be of interest? I love watching BASE videos and I think a lot of other skydivers do too, but I'm also very sure that there are many videos out there that don't make good viewing for the public for one reason or another (very technical/educational/boring, illegal, etc). Setting up a restricted section of the site would be the easy part... restricting access to only BASE jumpers would require some thinking/help. I have some ideas of how it could be done though.

Any other ideas/comments?

Dave

Why do you think that the current system needs to be changed?

I've always thought that SM very user friendly--for all users. I'm not sure you need to do a bunch of extra work to make it BASE friendly. It already is, by virtue of being "everyone friendly."

I'm no basejumper myself but love watching some basefootage. I don't really think that a BASEjumpers-only section would be that good. I also don't want to miss the footage that are more than just nice footage, footage where you can lean something.
Maybe you could split the basesection up into two parts. One for nice edited videos and one for more 'boring'/technical videos.

About illegal videos. I think it is best to keep them off the internet. It's not that difficult to go around security off websites. Just imagine what would happen if a video got leaked. What stops authorities from hacking the site and using the video in the court of law?

Just some comment..
Thijs

Rules of evidence. They'd have to have the camera man in court to testify that he was at X location on Y date taking that picture of Z base jumper. It could be done, but it'd be a lot of work for a trepassing charge.

How certain are you of this?

If I was the prosecutor, I'd probably just roll the video, and then ask the jumper (under oath, and at penalty of perjury) if it was them, and if it was at such and such a place and time.

Personally, I don't like that idea. I enjoy watching BASE videos. There are far to few to view as it is now.

I'd have to BASE jump just to have access? I'm unprepared. I need more skill.

...or are you saying you have some awesome footage that shouldn't be posted publicly?

I've done a few trials, so I'm fairly certain. You can't introduce photographic evidence unless you have the foundation from somebody with first hand knowledge that the photo is what it's being represented as. In other words, "I was at that location at that time and took that picture of Mr. Jumper, and Mr. Jumper is sitting in this courtroom." Without that foundation, you can't even show the tape.

You could ask the jumper to identify himself as the person on the video and that would solve the foundation problem ("yes, I was there at that time & place and that's a photo of me"), but there's a constitutional privilege against self-incrimination (the 5th amendment) & a jury or judge can't take his silence as any evidence of guilt. No (competent) lawyer would allow his client to answer that question.

Two thoughts:

1) I know of several cases in the US where prosecutor's threatened to use video they had confiscated after the fact. One of these involved jumpers being prosecuted after being apprehended in a park several hours after the jump, with no witnesses to the jump. Does this mean that the prosecutors' were bluffing? And they couldn't have used the video to prosecute them? I don't know of any cases where this went to court, because the jumpers almost invariably plea bargained when confronted with the (confiscated) video and the threat to show it in the courtroom.

2) Not all BASE jumpers are in the US. I know of at least one case where jumpers in Europe were prosecuted based on video that had been confiscated. I also know of a case in Australia where a jumper was prosecuted based, in part, on video that had been confiscated. In the Australian case, there was other evidence, but the video was introduced without any testimony from the cameraman in both cases.

I am NOT a trial lawyer and have NO trial experience, but chuckbrown's assessment is in accordance with my understanding of the rules of evidence regarding admission of photographic evidence. However, the situation you raise where video is confiscated directly from a jumper (and presumably still in his/her camera) is significantly different than a situation where a prosecutor sees a video clip posted on a website. In the former case, you have at least most of the required chain of custody links, as the video was confiscated directly from the alleged jumper (again, presumably taken from his/her camera). In the latter, the prosecutor would have a very steep hill to climb to establish who shot the video, when, where and of whom, because anybody with a copy of the clip can post it to the web. I personally have lots of clips saved on my hard drive and on DVDs I have purchased, and I could easily post them on the web, but I don't even jump.

If the video confiscated directly from the alleged jumper was NOT taken out of the jumper's camera, I would think it would be more difficult for a prosecutor to affirmatively establish the pre-reqs for admission because, as noted above, mere possession of jump video does not mean the possessor shot it or jumped. (Having it in the jumper's camera doesn't ABSOLUTELY prove it either, but it makes it far less of a leap of faith, and I would guess some judges might be willing to go with it and admit it under those circumstances).

In any case, regardless of adimissibility issues, if it gets to the point where a prosecutor is involved, that presumably means charges have been filed. And in that event, a prosecutor can use video as leverage to encourage a deal because he/she knows that in order to fight it, the alleged jumper will usually have to spend a lot of money on legal fees, and often, the alleged jumper decides it is better to cut a deal and his/her losses than to spend lots of money and/or go into debt just to beat a relatively minor charge. It's not supposed to work that way, but unfortunately, it often does.

This is a different situation that in skydivingmovies website. In yours, the videos were found on the person of the detained. Assuming probable cause, and that the search was legal, you may have a situation where the officer can lay the foundation of what he found and where he found it. Of course, there are evidentiary challenges to the video, i.e., Foundation on who took it, who is on it, etc.

Here's where the group dynamic fits in. There's the famous "prisoner's dilemma." All it takes is one in the group to take a deal and rat out the others. Just one of them could testify about the video.

Exactly. The bigger problem is if the prosecutors know who took the photos, because the camera man may not have the privilege of the 5th, especially if the prosecutors agree not to charge him with any crimes. In that case the judge can order the camera man to testify and if he's evasive in his answers he runs the risk of contempt of court.

As to Tom's question about the prosecutor bluffing, without knowing the exact facts its hard to say. I would hope that the jumper had a lawyer who gave him the proper advice. I'm a little curious about the NPS confiscating a video camera where there were no witnesses to a jump; sounds like an unreasonable search and seizure issue (which means the evidence is inadmissible). They may very well have been bluffing.

The case I referenced wasn't the NPS. I believe it was county sheriff, but it could have been city PD.

I shouldn't have made the assumption that it was NPS. The same concerns would still apply to local law enforcement.

personaly i will think twice after what has happened to Rene´s video...

I dont realy care that all the skydivers can see my vids,but it would borther me if my vids ended up as Rene´s has done...

Faber.....I hear you.
But it was Rene's ( or at least his very good friends) idea to post the video......as education...as a warning.
It certainly gave myself and I am sure many many others a big 'smack in the face' dose of reality, compared to the glitzy , glam videos we see on the SDM site ( I'm guilty too !!)
Thats not a bad thing ...right?

The question over potential prosecution is certainly an interesting one........one hopefully that our legal eagles on the '.com' can answer......
MRM21K..???

i do agree but as im aware of it were taken from SM and put up on serval other servers arround the would(specially at freak sites),which annoyes me.
I think Rene´s video is a good lesson to all of us,just sad to see it else were

Yep.
http://www.uselessjunk.com/...article&sid=1110 Scroll down for the comments... pretty entertaining.

And comments about it after it was posted somewhere else too: http://www.fazed.net/...p;last=1&id=7374

Dave

why would anyone post that vid. in a forum of non jumpers????? a place where you know the people watching have no understanding of what we do or why. you are just asking for us as base jumpers to be ridiculed and making it more difficult to open legal sites. the general public looks at something like this and has the belief that we are all a bunch of idiots who get killed on a regular basis. i don't think that this is a good way to portray ourselves. just my .02

Did any tryed to contact thouse sites,to get the video removed?

I wrote a comment in the first link but guess it wont help much.

Chadkal,the video werent posted in non jumpers forum it were simply ripped from there as i understand..

Dave how much would it take to make the videos streaming(BASE videos) would that be totaly way out? thinking of thouse streamings were you cant DL from.. just an idea..

I do not know of any streaming method that you cant copy to your hard drive one way or another.

i found it imposible to dl videos played in flash or marcromedia websites.. perhaps i just do it wrong..

I never tried it but it should be possible.
The video must be placed online somewhere to be playable. It's just seeking where the video stands (it's url) and you got it.
If you can download the flash files from the site and you have a program that can edit flash, you should be able to find the link to the video somewhere.
Anyway, I'll try it once I get home next week.

Thijs

I preferred to make it easier to download/save videos instead of trying to prevent that. There's no perfect way to prevent a video from being downloaded, if someone wants to go to enough trouble. But from a bandwidth perspective, I'd rather have each user download a file once and never again as opposed to downloading it each time they want to watch it.

The site currently has over 10,600 registered, activated users. I'd guess that the vast majority are skydivers. But any one of them can send a video to a friend or whatever and suddenly it's all over the internet.

Here are comments about Jeb Corliss' A Year in the Life: http://forums.somethingawful.com/...amp;threadid=1378344.

So back to my original question. Are some BASE videos more fit for the public than others? Should they be treated differently?

Dave

One thing you will notice with sites is they really like to rebrand things as their own. I think that you might want to consider having to have all BASE videos be reencoded with a logo on them in a corner or even better one that jumps from corner to corner. I would almost gaurentee that ebalmsworld and SomethingAwful would'nt host files that have: "SkydivingMoves.com!" all over them.

Reencoding might take about 30 minutes per file.

sounds like a great thing..

Or.....you could just design a bug and upload to the site, so that before submissions.....people could just download it ...and pop it onto the video they want to upload........dunno bout most of you but I have to compress my videos from their original higher quality versions before uploading.........perfect time to add a bug (logo)

would like to know how i does this,could you PM or tell it here,thanks

PM sent....

I think that anyone posting video up on the web now knows the possible consequences that could be involved so its up to the jumper and their personal/base ethics. I don't think that any changes should be made its awesome the way it is. Everyone should just stop and think about it before they post something up on the web. For example if someone posts a video that burns a site they'll take some serious shit from the base community, which is a perfect example of how base ethics and self regulation will deal with the problem. Just my .02

It can be done...
Simplest method is to download the .swf file (search for this in the html of a page)
Then create a new project in flash, and import the .swf file.

Because the file is (usualy) protected, you can't edit it.
But you can just put the entire project on a timeline an export it again as a new project, or .avi or quicktime...

And this is just using flash itself...there's also quite a few hacking tools out there...the more you look into protecting files..the more people will try to hack them..

If you don't want someone to see a video...don't put it online....