A huge misunderstanding about copyright

The controversy with The Richter Scales and Lane Hartwell has been fascinating to follow because it goes to show how little understanding people have about copyright and fair use.

For those not following, the Richter Scales, an acapella group, used a photo from Hartwell, a professional photographer in SF — and they put it into a very funny video for a song they created and posted on YT. Lane objected and asked for compensation, but the group replaced Lane’s photo with another. There are many details I’m skipping over, but you can find most here or at the websites above.

There are people arguing across the spectrum, from, “If I have a © on my photos, nobody can use them without permission”, to “If you post it on a webpage, then it’s fair game to use any way I like”, and many people in between.

Copyright laws aren’t particularly well understood by most, and there are grey areas even for experts. This is problematic.

‘Fair use’ allows the Richter Scales to include Lane Hartwell’s photograph in their video for either comment/criticism or parody — and is has to meet a handful of criteria, such as: the purpose of the use should be transformative (adding value, and not simply reproducing the original), the amount used must be justifiable, and it must not erode the potential market for the original artist (Lane). It’s seems fairly easy to argue these points in defense of the Richter Scales, but this system has grey areas and is very complex, and of course people can argue for Lane as well. A better solution is clearly needed.

I want to further explore this and hope to publish my thoughts in follow-up posts over the holidays.

A visit to the Teotihuacán Pyramids

This morning I visited the Teotihuacán Pyramids, just outside of Mexico City. The architecture, planning, and engineering is amazing considering this was built in 200 BC and still stands today. Something I couldn’t stop thinking about when walking through the ruins is that the Aztecs used to sacrific people in this exact spot. From Wikipedia
bq. “Teotihuacános practiced human sacrifice. Human bodies and animal sacrifices have been found during excavations of the pyramids at Teotihuacán; it is believed that when the buildings were expanded, sacrifices were made to dedicate the new building. The victims were probably enemy warriors captured in battle and then brought to the city to be ritually sacrificed so the city could prosper. Some were decapitated, some had their hearts removed, others were killed by being hit several times over the head and some were even buried alive.”

Here is a photo I took of the Pyramid of the Sun, which is the third largest pyramid in the world.

A truly global job

I love my job, and last week I was asked to put together a list of countries where I’ve developed partnerships at Google. Over the last two years, I have worked with companies in 47 countries, and have visited 9 of them.

Here are the countries where I’ve developed partnerships: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, UK, and US.

Only 3 more until I break the 50 mark…

Here is a map of all the place I’ve visited, as well as the place I’d like to go. Blue=been there, green=want to go, red=lived there