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 The fabulous guys over at Richter Scales ,that bought us the now infamous, strangely true and oddly wonderful video “Here Comes Another Bubble”, featured a photo in that video that has caused the removal of the video from YouTube. The photo in question was taken by photographer Lane Hartwell. Lane’s work was featured in the video without her permission and without any payment to her. The “Here Comes Another Bubble” video was removed from YouTube under a DMCA takedown order. However, just as fast as it is taken down, someone else puts it right back up.
A lot of people have vilified this photographer in the blogosphere for suing over the photo, which, shows up for about a good 2 or 3 seconds. From TechCrunch to JohnChow.com, people are voicing their opposition to her lawsuit. They are saying things like she needs to lighten up. They have said that she shouldn’t cause trouble because the photo falls under fair use. People are also saying that she doesn’t understand copyright law and its applications to the use of her photo in the video. All of this raised a very important question in my mind. How would I feel if one of my photos had been used or some of my music had been used and I received no credit or money for it? I have always been the kind of person who tries to understand both sides of an argument. As a photographer and a musician, I empathize with her. I did some research on Lane Hartwell and I can honestly say that I can understand where she is coming from. Here is a direct quote from Lane’s website.
I’m frustrated. I don’t think a day goes by anymore that I don’t find my images taken and used without my permission. Magazines have stolen my photos. Acquaintances have stolen my photos. I have disabled downloading of my images to everyone but friends, but it’s still a problem. Along with this, everyday I am hit up with requests for me to give people photos I have shot of them. I’ll be shooting an event and people will push their business cards on me and tell me to “email them the shots”. When I politely explain that I won’t be doing that, and why I won’t be doing that, they usually get nasty with me. If I tell them they can purchase a file or print from me, 9 times out of 10 I never hear back from them. Or the invitations I get from people I barely know to come to their parties, (”Please come to my party” and oh, yeah, and bring your camera!), or people just straight up asking me to come and shoot something for them with never an offer to trade something or pay me for my time. I literally had one person tell me straight up that they didn’t hire a dedicated photographer for their event because they invited me and a few other photographers to come and shoot. Adding insult to injury, I find my photos stolen, on someone’s website, and there is no credit or link back to me. The chain of attribution is broken and once it’s broken, it’s impossible to really fix. It’s like I don’t even exist. I’m fed up.”
I think she has seen her work stolen one too many times and, as she stated, she is fed up. The problem is that this work is a parody. As such, a certain amount of freedom is given to allow the video creators to use certain elements in their work.As bloggers we are often faced with the issue of stolen or derived work. It could be an article idea that we came up with and someone else uses, it could be a theme that someone takes and claims as their own or it could be the exact design, style and purpose of our website that someone emulates and capitalizes on. One notable example of a derived work is JohnChow.com and *JohnCow.com. Sometimes it may feel like the whole world is copying our work. Sometimes we even go to other sites LOOKING for inspiration. We may be looking for design work or we may be looking for things to blog about. It happens. I hope that Lane Hartwell achieves great success, notoriety and fame for her photographic work. I also hope that people try to understand her point of view instead of just condemning her as some crazy person who needs to ‘get over it’. We all have things that are meaningful to us and important to us and we shouldn’t let the fun we are having overshadow someone else’s right to make a living or their right to be recognized for what they do. I’m not sure a lawsuit is the best use of her time, but, let’s at least try to understand her before we condemn her. Someday we might be in her shoes. We may not handle it with a lawyer, but I think that a lot of us would have a hard time just “getting over it”. Lane Hartwell, according to her blog, will be releasing a statement soon about the whole ordeal so stay tuned.
*I happen to know, based on reading John Chow’s blog, that he is fully aware of John Cow, but it’s the principle of the matter that I’m using to illustrate my point here – so don’t send me any emails or leave me comments telling me this. I already know that he knows.
Posted By Kila Morton
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