What a waste of humanity.

The reality is that everything found on the web is not free for anyone to do with as they please. Hard pressed, I’m sure you could get any reasonable adult living in a capitalist society to eventually admit to this even if only using absurd and unlikely examples to illustrate the point. The band is obviously at least a little bit legally savvy since they were the first to bring an attorney into the discussion.

So here we go: a band takes Lane’s work and uses it without her permission. They don’t give her any credit at all meaning that the supposed exposure is worthless and she is supposed to willfully accept this as a good thing somehow? How is it you people are all attacking the person who didn’t do anything wrong here?

Clearly this isn’t about the money. Lane has already said that the money after attorney costs will go to a charitable cause. (as it apparently would have if the band had originally agreed to terms) Instead, this is about protecting her rights to her own work – something that I would not expect anyone who has never worked for themselves to produce a livelyhood should ever understand (probably most of the people posting here) but something that the Richter Scales should damn well be familiar with.

The point isn’t that they stole her work and didn’t make millions off it (though the free publicity from the youtube video and the fallout since obviously has helped them in a way that is likely to be financial) The point is that they stole her work, period. If they do this and publicly use it and she doesn’t do anything, she is condoning people stealing her work and doing whatever they want with it. Is that what everyone here seems to think she should be doing?

No, I wrote that myself.

I’m quite stunned that Scoble, who claims to have been a pro photographer, doesn’t understand how licensing works, or the difference between commercial and editorial photography. Perhaps this is the reason he is no longer doing it.

Nach einiger Copyright-Jonglage: It’s back

Via “The Bubble” Is Back…

I never thought anything would make me nostalgic for SF during the the final absurdities of the first boom, but TechCrunch is doing its best.

i have a strong feeling that the comment is written by the legal attorney friend of hers

Interesting interview and goes to show she’s insulating herself and hearing what she wants to hear…

http://www.news...9835714-39.html

She’s gotten support from the tech community?

Can’t wait to hear how much that invoice is for!

BTW, when will you start your parody blog?
My concern is that your planned blog will be amusing or not.

(a) [NOT MS HARTWELL] ‘If the subject poses willingly for the camera, that is consent. That is saying “Yes, you can have my image and even make money for it”‘

(b) Ms. Hartwell, about taking photos in public places: “If you had asked me to not take your photo there, I would have respected your wishes.”

(c) Ms. Hartwell, on her blog: “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.”

Here’s my take:
- suppose Ms. Hartwell propositioned her subjects with “Hi, I’m Lane Hartwell. Would you mind posing for a photo? If you want to see the photo I took, you can buy a license from me at my hourly rate; email me, I won’t be emailing you.”…how many folks at these parties — the same people getting upset a bit later — would actually pose for her? It seems like a lot less — the fact that she notices lots of people getting upset once she post-facto discloses the terms of her photo-taking proves this, I think.

I don’t mean to pick on Ms. Hartwell too much — I’m certain similar “shoot first, inform later” policies are the norm in much of the professional photography world — but this state of affairs is still hilarious, as it reduces Ms. Hartwell’s defense to basically “I only take photos of people who’ve agreed to let me take their photo; I only disclose my terms and conditions after I’ve gotten the photo from them; a lot of time people get upset when they find out what those terms and conditions are, but hey! I’m just doing what everyone else does in the photo business, so there!”.

So, why make this point at such great length? As a bit of a moral lesson for the photographers here: You “professional photographers” want to lecture kids like the richter scales’ about how it was wrong and immoral for them _not_ to contact each photographer whose image was used, disclose the full nature of their project, and get explicit each photographer’s explicit permission. Fine, lecture, but it’s worth stopping and asking “how much money would I actually make, if I informed each subject of the full terms and conditions associated with my taking their photo, rather than take the ’shoot first, inform later’ approach…”.