Quirk, you an iconoclastic shitstirrer :) I haven't seen much vitriol. Given the occasional time this group's really lynched people (particularly corporations), I think everybody's been quite nice. Apart from one silly link to some shitty blog, everyone else has just been saying, 'Yo, What's going on? Why aren't you paying up? Why aren't you talking?'. And I think Lan's handled it really calmly, especially given that Podtech have appeared to imply that he's being dishonest with us somehow.
Copyright is silly, yeah - IP is pretty silly, but at least it allows individuals to be paid for stuff they make. Since that's the way it has to be to avoid people being exploited (like having a Union for creativity), Creative Commons is just an attempt to do it all a bit more intelligently. And in my mind, your song being recorded and played by someone else is as different from someone composing and recording your face as a single image as it is from you being an actor in or director of a film or an author of text. Each have different authorship rights. Casey wasn't performing a creative work, and i assume she signed a release for Lan allowing him to use the image he took of her? Whether Podtech needed to contact or reward her somehow for being the face of their competition campaign is another matter. You wouldn't just be able to use, say, Kate Moss's face on an ad for a cosmetics product competition without her permission. But if you did, the photographer would also get paid. You said that if you put stuff online, you don't own it any more than you own the rainbow over your house... But this isn't really about ownership, is it? It's about someone getting someone else to do their work for them for free. Yeah, I don't particularly care about the copyright of my Twittervlog films, and I'm not using them to make a living - I'm happy for people to use them however - but if, say, Nokia used one of my films as a background for an N93 competition without asking, and i found out long after it was over, and i'd received no benefit from it in terms of links, attribution, new viewers and connecting with new people, i probably would not be totally cool with that. I'd say that they were cheeky c***s. (I hate starring out words, but I suppose I have to star out this one). If they'd used a *commercial* film of mine - something i'd created in order to be able to buy myself food, and not paid me for it, I'd feel even more strongly. I'd effectively be working for them for free, and even a small amount of money makes a much bigger difference to an individual than it does to a corporation. Anyway, that's what I think. Not that you'll ever read it, probably. Have a nice trip. Rupert http://twittervlog.blogspot.com/ http://www.twitter.com/ruperthowe/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/twittervlog/ On 29 Jun 2007, at 19:45, Adam Quirk, Wreck & Salvage wrote: I've been surprised by all the vitriol. I'd have thought that Podtech would have built up a couple brownie points with y'all by now, what with their paying you real money, and hosting awards shows for us all to circle- jerk at. Maybe the lesson here is to get paid First? Once you put something online, you don't own it anymore than you can claim to own a rainbow hovering above your house. It's in the public consciousness, part of the firehose of experiences that we all consume, transitory experiences. I think especially in this case since it's a digital photo of Casey McKinnon, if anyone has a claim to some money it would be her. If someone else made a recording of a song I was playing, and royalties were to be paid for that recording, I'd likely be the one to receive them. But I wouldn't demand them. Something just sits wrong with me when I hear about people billing other people for services that they weren't hired to provide. Creative Commons is pretty silly, not as silly as traditional copyright, but pretty silly. I'm heading out of town now so I won't be able to respond to any shit slung my way for a while :) P.S. Lan, you're a badass photog, I'm glad I found your work via this mess. -Adam [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
