Photographer Lane Hartwell vs. The Bubble

Photographer Lane Hartwell has just posted a statement on why she contacted a music group that used of one of her photos in a video without her permission, then asked that the video be pulled from YouTube. She writes:

"Photography is my livelihood. It’s how I pay my bills. I’m not treating the band any differently than any other group that uses my work without my permission.

"There is also the issue of how my copyright protects my subjects and my clients. If anyone can take my work to use as they please, what stops someone from using the imagery in a way that would be inappropriate? I must be able to protect my clients who hire me to shoot for them from subsidizing other’s projects and also, have to protect my subjects from having their images used in ways that they might find distasteful."

Many pro photographers will follow those words with an "Amen!" But we're far from hearing the last word on this.

To catch you up in case you missed it: Last week Hartwell's case was summarized in a Wired blog post. Over the weekend this blew up in a series of blog postings about who was right, Hartwell or the band. It was the perfect battle of EFF / Creative Commons / information-wants-to-be-free enthusiasm vs. DMCA / copyright / we-don't-work-for-free ethics. Somehow it helped that the video in question – "Here Comes Another Bubble" by a cappella group The Richter Scales – was a pretty darn funny take-down of Web 2.0 hype. Hartwell is no stranger to this world, having photographed many players in the IT industry. She even blogged recently about pulling her work from Flickr to prevent infringement.

Was Hartwell right to demand a fee for the brief use of her photo in a low-budget humor video? I say obviously yes. Plenty of bloggers say no – and are grasping for some legal justification for why the band was within its rights. What have they come up with? Fair use under parody seems to be the consensus, but it doesn't quite match the situation. The band wasn't parodying Hartwell's image, they were doing a parody of a Billy Joel song. And yes, I discussed this with a copyright attorney (Nancy Wolff, author of The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook) before I wrote this post.

For the counter-view, and to watch the video (still live at a video sharing site that hasn't yanked it), see this post on TechCrunch.

Comments

[dan derella]

Good for her. There's way to much copyright infringement these days and professionals have to more vigilant then ever to protect themselves and their livelihood. I myself recently had to send a cease and desist letter to a Flikr member who poached one of my photos as there own.