# The person who took the Rodney King video...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 7, 2000, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922 "2000-01-07T05:29:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MrsBWayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@MrsBWayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrsBWayne)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2000, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922/1 "2000-01-07T05:29:00Z")

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I was wondering today if the person who took the video got anything from Rodney after the verdict. Does anybody know?

SW

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**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2000, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922/2 "2000-01-08T02:14:00Z")

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That’s an interesting question. I don’t know but it’s odd that he isn’t a household name lake Zapruder or something. Was it shown on the news before any trials? (I’m sure it was but I don’t remember.) I’d guess that whatever channel aired it first paid him for it. Not familiar how royalties work in a news-footage situation, so I don’t know if he made any money from repeat airings. I believe there was a thread a few months ago about the Zapruder estate wanting to charge for viewing the Kennedy film. Anyone?

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“I’m the luckiest man in the world, now that Lou Gehrig is dead.” Homer Simpson

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**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2000, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922/3 "2000-01-08T03:14:00Z")

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The man who shot the footage was George Holliday. He sold the footage to a local LA station, KTLA, for a few hundred dollars. KTLA then gave the footage to CNN and then everybody got it.  
Holliday tried to sue KTLA to regain the copyright so he could collect royalties, but I don’t believe he was successful. Holliday argued that he had only sold it to KTLA and did not grant rights for it to shown all over the world.

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**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2000, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922/4 "2000-01-08T03:22:00Z")

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Wow! My WAG was almost dead on! Is that good or bad?

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“I’m the luckiest man in the world, now that Lou Gehrig is dead.” Homer Simpson

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2000, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-person-who-took-the-rodney-king-video/5922/5 "2000-01-08T16:09:00Z")

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If I ever do that im going to transfer it to computer & overlay some message on top of all of it, so they know just who made it.