Talk:Clinton Fein

Confusing
These three sentences


 * The United States v. ApolloMedia case challenged existing notions of on-line privacy and to raise First Amendment issues of free speech on the Internet. After the rejection of an urgent request to intervene by Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, the case was heard in oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Fein never revealed the identity of the users of Annoy.com, and the gag order was lifted.

are confusing. Besides the current ideas of on-line privacy, WHAT did the case challenge? WHY did Scalia request to intervene, WHO rejected it, WHAT was the decision, and finally, WHY was the gag order lifted?

This sentence


 * The advertisement consisted of an image displaying a purse-lipped Rudy Giuliani sitting naked in a urine-filled glass box, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst and part of an exhibit Sensation that resulted in the former mayor withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum.

is overloaded with clauses. WHAT is part of Sensation? WHAT resulted in the former mayor withholding funding from the museum: the part, the technique or the glass box? Also, WHO was this former mayor? The verb consist of requires several components; are there others?

Thanks! -- Perfecto 03:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the input.

In answering the questions you raise, I ended up having to expand the three sentences into three paragraphs. My attempts to keep it short and avoid legalese ended up making it confusing. I haven't changed it in the article yet.


 * The United States v. ApolloMedia case challenged existing notions of on-line privacy and to raise First Amendment issues of free speech on the Internet. Fein argued that the gag order violated the First Amendment ban on prior restraints and the statutory requirement that it have a definite duration. Both a Texas magistrate court and District Court refused to lift the gag. ApolloMedia appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who in February 2000 agreed to hear oral argument, which occurred in May 2000.


 * During that time, ApolloMedia attempted to solicit the intervention of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by filing a motion to stay the Order. Scalia refused to intervene. In a six-page opinion the Fifth Circuit remanded the case back to the District Court to determine whether the gag order on ApolloMedia was still valid given the constitutional precariousness of the order's indefinite duration.


 * In spite of the government’s objections, the entire record, including the government's application and the entire subsequent proceedings was unsealed and the gag order was lifted unequivocally by the District Court. Later, the Fifth Circuit agreed to unseal the records under their jurisdiction, including a transcript of the oral argument.

The second sentence was changed in the article to read:


 * The advertisement displayed an image of a purse lipped Rudy Giuliani sitting naked in a urine-filled glass, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst, in which animate objects are soaked in formaldehyde and encased in a glass containers. One such piece was included in the exhibition Sensation, that resulted in the former mayor withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum.

--JasonWilson 23:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)JasonWilson

I bet you're a lawyer. OK you've completely answered my first item. Now I doubt the need to even mention Scala, who did nothing anyhow. How does this rewrite look:


 * In June 1999, the U.S. government sent Fein an order to reveal a user of Annoy.com's e-card service. Earlier, in April 1999, the University of Houston tried unsuccessfully to obtain the website's records.  The government later ordered Fein to stop discussing details of this investigation, its existence or its application.  In United States v. ApolloMedia, Fein argued that this gag order violated the First Amendment and the statutory requirement that it have a definite duration.  The case moved from a Texas magistrate court to a Texas District Court and then to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  The Fifth Circuit granted the appeal.  The District Court then unsealed the website's records and all related proceedings and lifted the gag order.

On the second item, WHAT was included in Sensation? The formalin-soaked object, the image or the advertisement? I suppose this inclusion caused the former mayor to withhold funding. WHO was this mayor &mdash; do you presume everyone knows the mayors of NY? -- Perfecto 01:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

The rewrite is great.

As far as the first item, I thought everyone in the world did know Rudy Giuliani, who is the subject of the banned advertisement (to which I added a link). How does this read?

The advertisement displayed an image of a purse lipped former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, sitting naked in a urine-filled glass, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst, in which animate objects are soaked in formaldehyde and encased in a glass containers. Fein’s advertisement, designed to link Mayor Giuliani with mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg, incorporated imagery from the exhibition Sensation that resulted in mayor Giuliani withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum.

--JasonWilson 04:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Reducing 196 words to 74 is a pleasure.


 * To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody  can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a  quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. -- Mark Twain

-- Perfecto 05:52, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for the excercise. I removed the confusing bar, since clarity has been achieved. Not sure if that is the protocol, so forgive me if I violated it.

--JasonWilson 23:30, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews droping crap on ya
Here is an article submitted to wikinews which will be deleted for not being news, although the last paragraph might concievably support a story. I doubt you want to merge any of it into the article, but I wouldn't know. JeffBurdges 15:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Clinton Fein(born 1964 in South Africa) is an artist, writer and activist, noted for his company Apollomedia's controversial website Annoy.com and its Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, United States Attorney General, regarding the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997.

This victory, a landmark for First Amendment rights, won Fein's right to disseminate his art. Fein won another federal First Amendment lawsuit to remove a government-imposed gag order. As recognition, Fein received a nomination for a PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in 2001. Fein now presides the board of First Amendment Project, a nonprofit organization that protects and promotes freedom of information, expression, and petition.

As an artist, Fein is represented by Toomey Tourell in San Francisco and Axis Gallery in New York, and his shows have been dogged by controversy. In 2001, Fein was scheduled to open a solo exhibition in San Francisco in October. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Artforum Magazine pulled an advertisement for Fein's show from their October issue. The advertisement displayed an image of a purse lipped former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, sitting naked in a urine-filled glass, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst, in which animate objects are soaked in formaldehyde and encased in a glass containers. Fein’s advertisement, designed to link Mayor Giuliani with mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg, incorporated imagery from the exhibition Sensation that resulted in mayor Giuliani withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum. Clutching a crucifix with a nod to artist Andres Serrano and with another Giuliani targeted work, Chris Ofili's Virgin Mary forming the backdrop, copy on the top of the image reads: "Mike for Mayor" and at the bottom, "Start Spreading the News."

Artforum Executive Editor, Knight Landesman, stated that the magazine was understaffed and that the editors did not feel comfortable publishing a disparaging image of Rudy Giuliani.

In October 2004, Palo Alto-based printing company, Zazzle, destroyed two of Fein’s giant images just before the opening of a solo exhibition at Toomey Tourell Gallery. The one image, reviewed at Chelsea’s Axis Gallery by New York Times’ Ken Johnson, was described as "an American flag with the stars and stripes made from the text of the official Abu Ghraib report is accompanied by fifty representations of the iconic image of a hooded man teetering on a box with wires trailing from his arms comprising the stars." The second image depicting President Bush on a crucifix entitled "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was also withheld by the printing company, who told San Francisco Chronicle art critic, Kenneth Baker that the company had "destroyed the images." Company spokesperson, Matt Wilsey, claimed the image might "offend Christians," and threatened to sue Fein for defamation if Fein publicly criticized the company’s actions.

Fein's image, "Who Would Jesus Torture?" is published in Art of Engagement, Visual Politics in California and Beyond, by Peter Selz, scheduled for release in November 2005. Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, is the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum and a former curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

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