Posted by Mathew @ 3:38 pm on December 24 2007 | |
You might be thinking that the Lane Hartwell incident — the Soap Opera 2.0 of a week or two ago — had pretty well blown over by now. The photographer, whose photo was used in the video by a capella group Richter Scales, is reportedly still pursuing financial compensation from the band, but apart from that most bloggers seem to have moved on. Not the popular video blogger known as Nalts, though.
He’s posted a video calling for others to create YouTube accounts and mashups using more of Lane’s photos, and several people have done so. That’s fair comment, obviously — although whether it’s fair use is debatable, since the videos aren’t specifically a parody, and they don’t really comment on a larger issue in any direct or obvious way (although they are clearly meant as a commentary on fair use).
Still, I wish Nalts and some of the commenters weren’t so quick with the insults and the personal attacks. It’s one thing to disagree on an issue, but when you make it personal it’s easy to lose sight of the real point.
weren’t so quick with the insults and the personal attacks
Nalts and other anonyomous aggressive onliners are cause for alarm, and I'm very concerned that the online community tolerates too much of this attack crap because it's interesting. It's also too close for my comfort to a proxy for physically assaulting people as were the attacks on Kathy Sierra that got her to quit blogging. Ironically, this is the stuff that slows, not speeds up, the changes many of us would like to see that would clarify fair use issues and keep us focused on moving the whole community close to online eenlightenment.
I was wondering what you guys thought of this angle of fair use (irrespective of Lane Hartwell):
- It is widely accepted that posting 30 second preview of a song will not get you sued. It may still violate copyright, but this is widely accepted - to the point that search engines like Yahoo audio search and Taptu let you listen to snippets of the song.
- What is the equivalent for a photograph? A thumbnail/smaller version? That would be my immediate thought, in which case YouTube downsamples quite a bit. And you can't even right-click and save. Google lets you search for images and save them is Google infringing on photographers' copyright? There was a case about porn companies suing Google for indexing their images, anyone know how that panned out?
Anyway, in both these scenarios, credit should be included so that we know where to obtain the full track/full quality image.
If my reasoning is correct, I think Lane is nitpicking, which is exactly the opposite thing to do on the Internet - it's just asking for the Streisand effect.
You're right about the 30-second preview -- although that hasn't been tested in court, and Universal Music has had even 30-second samples removed from websites. As for photographs, the thumbnail has been recognized in court decisions as fair use in many cases -- Google won the case you're referring to.
I'd never heard of you until today when I came across all of your posts and ridiculous backing of this copyright infringement and your touting those ignorant misogynists at TechCrunch and "some lawyer" they supposedly spoke to.
After reading what you've posted I don't think I'm any better for it. If anything I wish there was a way to sue you and get some compensation for my time you've wasted.
I see the video being edited a big win for us little guys.
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Discussion
for “Nalts calls for Hartwell video mob”
weren’t so quick with the insults and the personal attacks
Nalts and other anonyomous aggressive onliners are cause for alarm, and I'm very concerned that the online community tolerates too much of this attack crap because it's interesting. It's also too close for my comfort to a proxy for physically assaulting people as were the attacks on Kathy Sierra that got her to quit blogging. Ironically, this is the stuff that slows, not speeds up, the changes many of us would like to see that would clarify fair use issues and keep us focused on moving the whole community close to online eenlightenment.
I agree Joe -- I don't think it really helps at all, and may even make
things worse.
"is reportedly still pursuing financial compensation from the band"
Do you have a citation for this? At fetching.net Lane states that she is not filling a lawsuit.
In her most recent post on the 19th, Lane says "I will be sending the
band an invoice for their use of my image in the first version of the
video."
Susan, she is sending the band an invoice. You need to get hooked on phonics.
I don't think that they are so much a commentary on fair use, but more a demonstration of the Internet's interpretation of Copyright being:
The vast majority of internet users understand Copyright to mean Right Mouse Click/Save As. Their computers let them do it, so it must be okay.
More here
http://www.ravinglunacy.org/index.php/2007/12/2...
I was wondering what you guys thought of this angle of fair use (irrespective of Lane Hartwell):
- It is widely accepted that posting 30 second preview of a song will not get you sued. It may still violate copyright, but this is widely accepted - to the point that search engines like Yahoo audio search and Taptu let you listen to snippets of the song.
- What is the equivalent for a photograph? A thumbnail/smaller version? That would be my immediate thought, in which case YouTube downsamples quite a bit. And you can't even right-click and save. Google lets you search for images and save them is Google infringing on photographers' copyright? There was a case about porn companies suing Google for indexing their images, anyone know how that panned out?
Anyway, in both these scenarios, credit should be included so that we know where to obtain the full track/full quality image.
If my reasoning is correct, I think Lane is nitpicking, which is exactly the opposite thing to do on the Internet - it's just asking for the Streisand effect.
You're right about the 30-second preview -- although that hasn't been
tested in court, and Universal Music has had even 30-second samples
removed from websites. As for photographs, the thumbnail has been
recognized in court decisions as fair use in many cases -- Google won
the case you're referring to.
I'd never heard of you until today when I came across all of your posts and ridiculous backing of this copyright infringement and your touting those ignorant misogynists at TechCrunch and "some lawyer" they supposedly spoke to.
After reading what you've posted I don't think I'm any better for it. If anything I wish there was a way to sue you and get some compensation for my time you've wasted.
I see the video being edited a big win for us little guys.