DISQUS

Karoli · 2 years ago

At this point, I think it's escalated to the point of unreasonableness. I just wrote a post saying that.

It's one thing to protest the use of an image -- she was within her rights to do that. At the point of protest, TRS had the option to remix the video without her image, or get her permission to use it. Let's leave behind the question of whether it should have been used at all for a minute...I think that one's been beaten to death.

TRS' response was to remix the video without her image and do their best to credit all other images. Good for them. Lesson learned. But now we have Hartwell wanting to be paid, claiming TRS is a 'commercial enterprise'.

The original video brought in a grand total of $120 in CD sales. Hardly big profit for big business. Sending an invoice for use of the image is simply an overreaction intended to be punitive and mean-spirited, in my opinion.

mathewi · 2 years ago

I couldn't agree more, Karoli.

James W. · 2 years ago

The only reason it's crumbling is because people, especially many IP lawyers, simply do not understand new media and the new way people digest media. They're stuck in an old world business model and most likely always will be because "if it ain't broke..." applies quite well.

I receive takedowns every single day at work, almost all of them illegal (in the fact that they're not properly formatted, lack certain criteria per 17USC, etc.), and almost all get dropped because people simply do not understand what the DMCA is. They think "well, that's my stuff, it's copyrighted, I want it taken down now" and are under the assumption -- thanks to MSM -- that all it takes is an email and an assertation. Most of them then quickly realize that there's a lot more to it and simply drop the takedown because it's fallacious at best (the most humorous one was a lady constantly whined to take down a LOLcat of her cat and was threatening to sue) or downright fool-hardy at least.

This debacle about Hartwell continues to show that people are largely ignorant of the law, this goes for both sides of the debate. TRS misunderstood Fair Use, and Lane, well that's all over the place so I don't need to repeat it.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse for abuse of the law.

Jope · 2 years ago

In the end, it's all about the compensation, as some of us suspected long ago, and not about attribution or "not replying nicely to an email request".

It's so easy to close up your photos in Flickr, or simply to use a real photo sales site, that it's really hard to understand why LH didn't do that in the first place...

It's all about the money, Zappa said it best a long time ago... :)

Yen Lai · 2 years ago

Agreed.

It is all about the money.

And all this talk of copyrights and not stealing from artists and plagiarism is all a smokescreen for a hack to get paid. It's so disingenuous it makes me sick.

This photo in particular isn't art, she takes pictures of tech guys at parties, with a digital camera, with an on-camera flash. We're not talking Robert Frank here...