I would say that more than victim of the DMCA, the video has been victim of a stupid, greedy photographer without knowledge of how the copyright laws work.
I think the real problem is that given the expenses of a lawsuit, lawyers behave like blackmailers.
Photogs are a notoriously conservative bunch when it comes to this sort of thing. Witness the wedding photographer basically holding hostage the wedding pictures for extremely high "print fees" and denying the bride and groom any rights to reuse the pictures of their own wedding. This has been the "industry norm". We were unable to find ANY wedding photographers who were willing to allow us to produce a CD containing the photos from our wedding for the guests, at any price. A few high quality digital cameras and some volunteers solved this problem, yielded outstanding results and saved a ton of money. One more industry bites the dust thanks to greed and an unwillingness to change with the times. Good riddance.
One alternative approach (prob too late for you) would be to put a "Wedding Photographer Wanted" in your local Craigslist with the stipulation that you must be able to buy the digital negatives. Let photographers know that current practice is unsatisfying and there is an opportunity they're missing.
Unfortunately, people easily buy into the FUD about not "capturing the magic moment" and will pay almost any price to "ensure" perfect pictures. If these guys weren't so flush with bookings, they would have a reason to be more flexible.
This was a "pre-craigslist" affair. There were still dinosaurs roaming the earth!!! Instead we took a "the more cameras the better" tack. Not only did we have several volunteers with expensive high quality digital cameras, we also handed out bags of disposable cameras to all of the guests and encouraged them to snap away at whatever they found interesting. At the end of the night, they returned the cameras. 99% of all of the pictures were crap but among the nearly 10,000 pictures there were astonishing gems that no professional could have captured. It all came out to be less than half of the cost of the lowest price "professional" that we found.
The CD was mailed to all of the guests a week later and everyone was captivated by the participatory nature of it all.
Everyone has heard horror stories about the pro going out of business, or losing the pictures. When you have 300 cameras, this is not a fear that you have!
There's a startup in there somewhere I feel it! Anyone game to develop it?
I'm all for photographers/artists/etc getting paid for their work, but "her story" is basically her being whiny and greedy:
...has founded a new company called YieldEx, which is still early, but aims to help Web site owners maximize their ad revenue. He's mum on the details, but VentureBeat hears he has $3 million...
so these guys expect me to work for free? Are they serious?
How much does she expect to get paid for a low resolution photo shown for a fraction of a second in a silly web video?
I was suprised to see the photographer and most of the flickr commenters have a similar attitude to copyright as the MPAA and RIAA, often using the same arguements and language, and instinct for legal action.
I had kinda assumed that sort of thing was the winding down of huge organizations slowly adapting to the new reality of mashups and whatnot, but there seems to be a lot of anger from small independants about the way the web has changed the business of photography. I'm curious if this is indicative of attitudes of other independent photographers, musicians, artists etc.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but the photo was protected. It is not protected by fair use because the video is not a parody of that photo, but of something else entirely. The photographer took the picture for Wired (where the video creator apparently downloaded it after a Google search), and Wired licensed the picture for use. In the page which includes the picture, there were several links to the original photographer's page.
The real lesson here is to ask for simple permission when including other people's content in your own. With e-mail, this is easier than ever. Either that or make sure that it's licensed under a "sharing" license. Failing both of those, you'll just have to find another image.
This is really how it's designed to work. It's not right to be able to just take someone else's work and slap it into your own with no permission or credit.
No, the law is wildly inconsistent. For example, using part of a song in another song is not protected. Using a photograph in a painting is protected. Using a photograph in a video may be protected, but this video apparently won't be the one to tell us.
I know wikipedia isn't the best source, but i think it's good enough to show there is no accepted standard across media types.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage
Do you know how many other photos were in that video? No one else complained because they realize it's a fun little video that's not making any money anyway!
"The real lesson here is to ask for simple permission when including other people's content in your own."
They didn't realize this would be so popular. If it wasn't so popular, do you think this photographer would have complained? No she wouldn't have even noticed.
She's turned herself into the Grinch all because of a 1-second showing of one of her photos. I hope she gets coal in her Christmas stocking!
Perhaps someone should start a "nuisance registry" that tracks so called "artists" that abuse the spirit of the legal system in this manner. That way the rest of us can systematically ignore their "art" and they can quickly fade into the obscurity that they so richly deserve.
I really don't know what to think. On the one hand, that video killed a bunch of my brain cells and I don't care what happens to it; on the other hand I hope the plaintiff loses for the sake of copyright.
I think the real problem is that given the expenses of a lawsuit, lawyers behave like blackmailers.