There was an interesting discussion under the video Jason Lanier is a CREEP by Youtuber David Weller. Jeff Bennion, a photographer and a lawyer from San Diego, chimed in with his expert opinion:Jeff Bennion Photography: I keep seeing this "GuyS, JAsOn is innocent until proven guilty! Don't you know Law?!" argument all over the internet right now. Let me break it down because on top of being a photographer, I am also a lawyer. That statement refers to the government locking up citizens for crimes they are accused of. What it means is that the government cannot take away someone's liberty until evidence has been presented by both sides and 12 common folk peers from the community (unless a jury trial is waived) evaluate the evidence and give the government the authority to sentence someone. It was a system designed to take authority away from a single person, the judge, and put it in the hands of representatives of the community, who are not legally trained, but simply trained by society on what's right and wrong. In other words, the same people who are watching all of these videos. The terms innocent and guilt have no place in a civil matter and when I hear it, it's the same as when photographers hear "Oh yeah, my iPhone has 12 megapixels and shoots at 1.4. Your lens is a 2.8!" It makes me cringe. There is in fact no system that prevents us, the citizens of the world, from looking at evidence presented by both sides and making up our own minds conclusively as to whether someone is a creep, an arrogant asshole, a person with an overinflated ego, a person who treats his peers like dirt, a person who treats his models like dirt, or any other conclusions you can draw out. None of us here or anywhere in the world need to wait years for limited bits of evidence to be presented to 12 randos and for those 12 randos to make a decision before we look at the same evidence and reach our own conclusions. Never in my life have I ever tried to save $120 by sharing a bed with a model and never in my life would I ever make an hour long video crying about how it's not fair that the women in fact did not like that and the world is being unfair to me. Never in my life would I ever try to save time by grabbing a model's bare thigh and moving it where I want instead of saying "Please drop your thigh" or "Please tuck in that tag." Never in my life would I ever put a BTS video camera directly behind someone's butt as they bend over, defend that decision as the only possible place to get BTS footage, and then accuse Irene Rudnyk of using her butt to get views. I don't know if he did anything illegal, but it's clear he's an asshole. Have any photographers in the industry come to his defense? Where are they? Has a single Sony Artisan come forward and said "This is not right? I love Jason." No, because his ego and asshole behavior have alienated him from everyone in the industry.
