I'm not quite sure what the spirit of your post is here. Are you aiming this at the fellow in question in this thread, or at his detractors?
Maybe (with the different fonts and all) this is copied from somewhere. Not sure. But I'll take a stab at it anyway despite all of this and despite the fact that I'm a newb. Grain of salt, etc.
If it look like a duck ,speaks like a duck yada yada its (your ) duck. Well not exactly
Now such plagiaristic video is making the rounds.
Since this individual was present at Rock Island, and since none have spoken in claim that this is their own video, it is reasonable to assume this video is, in fact, Mr. Fable's [sic]. Although plagiarism of one's own works is technically possible if the individual has made a contract with a different publisher beforehand, there is no indication that his video of this tornado achieved such a status. Therefore, no plagiarism is actually involved here, and the fact that none have levied this on him proves this. He's lying about his own footage, not stealing from another.
Those two funnel tornadoes do like quite similar but the questions are (1) was there severe weather that day in Kansas in that area ? (seems no)
The Rock, KS footage from 2004 has been verified by many independent sources, and the burden of proof is thus on the author of this statement to discredit these sources to establish that no severe weather happened in Kansas on this day. This will likely be impossible to do.
Despite the difference in minor details, the chances that a tornado will, throughout its entire lifespan, behave in mirrored shape, form, direction, and duration in exact comparison to a previous tornado is near zero. The minor differences can be explained by the fact that his footage was shot from a slightly different vantage - likely from a slightly different angle, and zoomed in past the trees that distracted from the view (thus the power lines are prominent as a result).
I'm assuming you meant Nebraska here anyway, and not Kansas. Although a funnel was seen in the area on that day last week, no tornado was reported as far as I know.
(2) why would this guy take the time to capture and show this particular tornado and send this to the new service when it is not that all spectacular (I feel like the news service was really hard up for some more photos?).
The fact that the Rock, Kansas tornado from 2004 is "garden variety" actually tends to speak more for the idea that Mr. Fable attempted to pass off previous footage as a current event. He likely considered this tornado to be relatively average, and even though he knew others were on that storm, he probably assumed that (like him) the tornado wouldn't be important enough to stand out in the memory of the other chasers who were there.
Although I do not know about this particular date in chaser lore, I have read that at least one individual caught two others on the Rock Island chase; if chasers generally caught more and better tubes than just Rock Island's on that day, then Mr. Fable likely assumed the chances of any chaser viewing that video and recalling it would be lessened even more.
The attempt to "flip" this footage lends some credence to this idea, since even if a chaser would have recalled this in the furthest reaches of his memory, flipping it might be enough to cause doubt and make such chasers move on. IMO this is somewhat representative of the lack of knowledge on how important some chasers consider
each of their catches to be, no matter how "low quality" the tube and no matter how old the storm is.
Furthermore, if he knew his tube wasn't particularly Mulvane-quality, he probably thought the media would pay him the $300 and send it to a few outlets near the obscure and barren land of Cherry County rather than spreading it everywhere. If not this, he at least figured it would remain well out of the reaches of other Midwest news outlets, who are used to "better" footage (and thus, this keeps it out of view of most chasers who may still guess his fraud). The fact that he sped it up probably indicates that he thought the footage was "too" average and risked being rejected (or, he may have still been scared that Rock, KS was submitted years before despite its "poor look"), so he doctored it up - and made it "too" exciting for the lay person, and as a result it spread much further than he likely figured it would. Backfire!
So, since he probably thought distribution wouldn't be wide or prominent due to his opinion of the lower comparative quality of the tornado from Rock KS, and since he picked a tornado he considered average from four years back on a multiple-tornado day, he submitted this "not that all spectacular" footage with the idea that he could pocket a quick buck for something he figured wouldn't be touted much and laugh uncaught all the way to the bank. Backfire!
(3) As we have seen there are many that have tried to steal many videos and photos and pawn it off as their own (as we have seen on copyright infringments many have copied Mike H. great stuff).
Once again, this was not stolen. At the very least, he used his own footage, but he deceived the press into thinking it was from a different event, which was wrong.
It could be that a tornado or another object is caught videotaped or photographed from a different direction at the same time. That is why there is a strict code of astronomical "law" relating to how, when and who gets a comet named after them. Sometimes it is not who gets the word out first but when the object is identified and verified by Harvard University first!
Again, nobody has stood up to claim this as their own footage, even though this story stuck to the front of the Yahoo news page for a long time earlier (more or less that this thread is now another novel). From my limited understanding of the chaser world, if this video was stolen, then at the very least someone else likely would have recognized the source. Still, though, if Mr. Fable was in a group and this was the sole footage of the group as a whole, then his chasing partner(s) from that day would have a legitimate grievance for the footage being used in this way.
The video was retracted. Now what?
The ramification of his deceit to the media is between Mr. Fable and the Associated Press. However, he has lashed out at chasers and defended his lie, likely because even the most careful of the multitude of laypersons are, compared with chasers, more easily fooled (see the "digital forensic detective" piece posted earlier) and thus more taken by his defense. Additionally, the recent television shows tend to give the public the impression that chasers are in fact competitive, so such a claim of "chaser jealousy" would be even easier for the public - and perhaps he figured the media itself as well - to accept at face value. Unfortunately for him, the AP rejected this explanation of his, and this person must face the wrath of the chasing community for his unnecessary slap at us.
As Shane and Mike mentioned earlier, he could have come clean, or at least lied and said he submitted the wrong footage. An "oops, I was playing around with that Rock, KS tornado at the same time and submitted that file instead" would have still garnered some "yeah rights" from the gallery, but the only lasting, harsh criticisms would have come from the usual crowd that doles out lasting, harsh criticisms. The rest of us would have snickered and likely have forgotten by next Spring, even if he came clean and said he was desperate for bill money or something. Instead, his comment provoked wrath in probably just about every chaser out there, including chasers who normally aren't easily moved to it.
IMO this won't affect the AP. They likely won't see tons of material on tornadoes again until next year or at least until next fall; their desire for "putting it out NOW" will overcome any long process they would want to adopt for verifying the footage they received. Mr. Fable did wrong in his lie but not enough to be nailed to the wall for it - it's his butthurt behavior after it backfired on him that has opened him up to all of this.
