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.