Wow. There seems to be a great deal of ignorance brewing behind the actual goings on of Lane Hartwell’s saga with Richter Scales. This morning, Lane issued a partial statement to clear things up:
In no small part due to this effort to keep things out of the public eye, certain people, rather imaginatively, have filled in their own details and jumped to some pretty wild conclusions. For the time being, I feel it is necessary to tackle one giant misconception. It has been erroneously reported in various media outlets and blogs that I have either filed or am in the process of filing a lawsuit against The Richter Scales. This is simply not true. At no point has there been any talk of filing a lawsuit on my behalf. To make matters worse, I have yet to be contacted by even one of these media outlets or bloggers to verify the authenticity of my supposed lawsuit.
A couple of facts here (although I have smart readers, maybe you could help them spread) that I should point out because angry mobs with mis-information cause way more harm than good. I’ve watched it happen on numerous occasions.
- Fact 1: Lane Hartwell makes a living being a photographer.
- Fact 2: Richter Scales is a group who defines themselves as: Men who sing (some people seem to not know who they are and what they do) The video was made to promote a funny song they wrote about ‘the bubble’.
- Fact 3: There is no lawsuit. Never has been one. Just a request to remove that photo. (I just learnt how to use iMovie and could help swap that one out in about 2 minutes).
- Fact 4: Lane hired a lawyer to request the video taken down as per the DMCA
- Fact 5: There are many photos in that video that are unattributed.
- Fact 6: Lane Hartwell has been a frequent and rampant contributor to our community for quite sometime. She gives her work/talent away, makes sure our crazy times are well documented, has given me and others permission to use MANY photos for free where we have asked. She is actually really cool about it.
I’m really put off that there are so many people spreading, but also believing, bad rumors in this case. I’m sure the many men behind the Richter Scales don’t want a mob sent out to harass a woman whose photograph they used. None of this was done in malice: the photograph used, the request for credit.
Why the maliciousness now? From uninformed bystanders?
10 Comments
Another great post on this topic.
A couple of things struck me with this controversy.
First - there are a lot of people that want to shove “the Internet wants to be free” down everyone’s throat. These are the same people that gripe about the music industry while doing nothing to support the new artists that do promote themselves with free music.
I love free stuff - but let’s get it from people that actually want to give their stuff away for free!
Second, there’s an underlying sexism in the words of Hartwell’s critics that’s pretty offensive. They suggest that Hartwell’s having a tantrum because she got her feelings hurt.
That’s not what I see. I see a strong, talented woman that’s not afraid to bust some ass, if she has to, to protect her livelihood.
I may not agree with Lane’s choices (or that of the video producers for that matter) but can do so respectfully. Unfortunately, the tone got out of control by many commenters (at least on the blogs that I read) on both sides of the debate, which led to the mob mentality (and the usual ridiculous gender references and other childish banter which has no place in these types of conversations). From my own perspective, I don’t think I have misinformation; I just have a different opinion than you.
To that end, I believe it’s important to separate out the actual “debate” from the rest of the noise. They are in fact not one in the same. The unfortunate thing in the tech blogosphere IMO is that the nastiness always ends up taking over ending in personal attacks that makes people fearful of disagreement when they should be able to instead, respectfully embrace it.
One thing fascinating to watch was how much maliciousness was doled out on Flickr, where you have to have an account to comment. An un-civil commenter’s life is one click away. That’s a much different and weirder league than just a disposable bit of sophomoric snark on digg.com, that’s a direct connection to YOU and a window into your life, your kids, your whatever… that you’ve chosen to post.
Anyway, an observation that those sideliners on flickr, aren’t sideliners at all. We have their whole context at our fingertips with a few simple clicks.
The sexism of the criticisms levelled at Lane is pretty consistent; I wish that were more surprising. The other thing that’s interesting is the same mob always takes the *other* side if the creative work in question is a website design that’s been ripped off.
I wish it were more surprising, too. Shelley’s most recent post: Respect is pretty awesome.
I would actually love to find some of those links. I remember when the TC ripoffs happened and Mike was angry…but I couldn’t find the posts.
I love the many freedoms given to us by the internet, but one of its failings is that context can be lost. What I mean by this is that issuing a DMCA takedown for a video where the copyright owners photo appears for just a moment is really rude. Without the context that Lane was already frustrated with copyright violations and had tried to contact the richter people without success I can understand how many people would jump to the conclusion that she was the petty and rude one. Context is key, and too often the game of chinese whispers that is the internet allows people to read one incomplete story and jump to conclusions.
I may be an optimist but I don’t ascribe this behaviour to malice but to differing opinions and the general laziness of us all when it comes to believing our sources.
I do however still stand by the idea that it is as important that one is not required to give attribution if the work is a fair use, as it is rude to NOT give attribution if the author can easily do so.
Was that the Techcrush incident? Here’s one link, if that’s the one you’re thinking of.
Also, Lane put up her full statement. To be honest, I think a lot of people owe her an apology.
I agree 100%.
I totally missed those. I’m glad, though. I hope someone has taken Lane for some tall glasses of wine and let her vent the ugliness.
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