citizen journalism, combined
with his understanding of
copyright law, drove him to
discover the platforms that
were being used to facilitate
the emerging trend.
He was particularly
interested in the licensing
of media, stating that as a
professional media source
“you can’t just jump on
Google and pull video, so
where is it coming from?”
In his research, he found
three contenders that were
testing the waters: a UK-
based photo agency that
was acquired by a Bill Gates’
startup, a group called Story
Full—a social media video
validation company—which
was acquired by News Corp,
and a division of Agence
France-Presse (AFP).In the early 2000s, AFP—
the oldest newswire in the
world—began receiving
videos from journalists and
strangers to the field alike.
The company began building
software that could process
large quantities of data to
make sure these videos hadn’tbeen altered in any way so
they could publish without
any question of validity.“I was living in New York at
the time when I found out
about AFP. I approached
them, interested in helping
ramp up and license the
software, but they refused
to meet with me,” Hartman
shared. “It took a trip to
Paris to convince them.”The problem was AFP’s
in-house journalists and
photographers did not like
the trend, as it would let
anyone with a relevant
video get AFP credit,
which before then was an
exclusive designation.