Bubblegate!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on December 19, 2007 at 4:11 PM PT
What a slimy mess the “Here Comes Another Bubble” is leaving in its wake as it travels all over the Web.
Today, Daryl Lang of PDNPulse, a blog from Photo District News, reported that it contacted more photographers whose pictures were used in the popular Web 2.0-mocking video by the San Francisco-based singing group, the Richter Scales.
Four of them responded that they also did not like the use of their work one bit, some objecting to the credit given, others to the non-payment and still others to not being asked for permission to use their photos.
Some objected to all three issues, all of which have to do with “fair use” under copyright law.
“I’m totally against the unauthorized use of my image,” said Ramona Rosales, whose picture of TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington was used in the video and who said she was going to ask that the photo be removed, to PDNPulse. “I was never asked permission nor have I received any compensation for its use; furthermore I don’t feel it is justified simply because they gave me credit.”
As BoomTown reported last night here, the Richter Scales posted a new version of its “Bubble” video after photographer Lane Hartwell had the first one taken down from YouTube, because they used a picture she took of Valleywag’s Owen Thomas without her permission or payment.
In Version 1.1, the singing group added a full list of credits, which were also on the video. They also replaced the Thomas picture with one of me.
(At its start, the video also uses a quote from BoomTown’s video interview with investor Peter Thiel, which you can watch in its entirety here, which BoomTown has since approved of.)
After the second one went up last night, Hartwell said she was still sending the Richter Scales an invoice for the first version of their video, which uses Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” as the tune in its parody and has been a viral hit on the Web.
I emailed Rosales for further comment, and will update this post when I hear from her.
About the new comments from other photographers quoted by PDNPulse, the Richter Scales’ Tom Shields said: “We have not heard from any other copyright owners regarding our video. If we do, we will attempt to reach resolution with them, hopefully in a civil, private conversation and not in the blogosphere. We are not trying to make a point, or looking for a fight, we’re just a bunch of hobbyists who like to entertain people.”
Ironically, Arrington–in a series of not-so-entertaining exchanges with another commenter, blogger Shelley Powers, in the Globe and Mail’s Mathew Ingram’s blog–felt Hartwell was wrong.
So, until this video also gets the copyright hook, here’s the new version of “Bubble”:
[Updated with Richter Scales comment.]
Comments
ahhh… all of us “information wants to be free” people aren’t so cavalier when the information is OUR information, are we? This is a silly situation… people, have we actually lost this much of a sense of humor about ourselves? Did we actually LOSE anything when our precious images were used? As Chris Smither says: “lose your blues and screw your head on tight again…”
The Creative Commons starts (as Lessig points out in his TED presentation) with Common Sense. And the folk who have beat up on the creators of this piece have lost theirs. Shame on them, and shame on PDNPulse for Drudge-reporting this nonsense.
The ironic aspect of this is I’ll bet that the same people who are turning this episode into, well, Bubblegate (nice one, Kara) also rail on all the right (or, possibly, left) wing haters out there who bring up every niche issue, at the expense of finding our centrist way in this new world we live in, which exists politically as well as in our daily tech lives on the internet.
Well, to sum this up, I liked the original version better…
Posted by Phil Gilbert at December 19th, 2007 at 5:54 pmHa Ha … I can’t wait for the version, due next week I guess, with nothing but shots of Kara.
Posted by Bruce Evans at December 19th, 2007 at 6:28 pmPhil:
Well said!
Bruce:
Sing it, sister! The Richter Scales need to get RIGHT on it!
Posted by Kara Swisher at December 19th, 2007 at 6:39 pm