16 posts tagged “ebsq”

Those of you who know me know that I'm not just an artist; I'm also a huge tech geek. And so it's with great interest (and concern) that I've been watching the most recent internet kerfuffle at the convergence of my two areas of interest.  You may not be aware of the latest viral video that is the darling of the same tech community it parodies, "Look, It's Another Bubble" by The Richter Scales. At the heart of this controversy is a photographer, Lane Hartwell,  who found out that yet another one of her photographs was used without her permission in this beloved video. Like many of you might have been in her place, she was pissed that her copyrighted work was used both without permission or attribution.

Yes, it was a good video. I personally passed it around to a lot of like-minded friends before this whole thing blew up. And I can understand that people who enjoyed this video are mad at the photographer for not just giving her blessing after the fact and spoiling everyone's fun. But now this woman is being called, among other things, "a whiny bitch" for protecting her copyright and being a spoil sport, and some claim she's impeding on The Richter Scales rights to use the piece in question because the end result is a parody. People have made fun of  the quality of her work, and the quality of her character, saying she's money grubbing and wants a piece of the viral pie, or is taking advantage of all of the publicity she's receiving for having this video taken down all over the net while she works things out with the other party. It's personally disheartening to see an artist villified by a community of which I am normally proud to be a part. 

So let me put this to you: if this was your photograph being used in this video, how would you react? Would you be thrilled to have your work (sans attribution) appear in a video gone viral? Or would you, like Lane, be pissed that your rights were being infringed upon and try to do something about it? Was the usage of Lane's photograph fair use, much as parts and pieces are used in a collage, for example?

For further context:

From the photographer in question: http://flickr.com/photos/fetching/2090802706/
From the infringing party: http://www.richterscales.com/blog/
A representative post from the tech community: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/15/misunderstanding-copyright-law-and-ruining-everyones-fun/

We greatly welcome you thoughts on this issue. And if copyright issues are important to you, please pass this on!
 

Abbey: Mom, I want to paint in the kitchen.

Me: Not right now, honey. Mumma just cleaned up the kitchen and I want it to stay nice at least a little while.

Abbey: But you can clean it again after I'm done painting, ok?

::headdesk::

In other news, I haven't been blogging (or even tweeting) much lately because the kids and I have all been varying degrees of sick over the past week, with Abbey having gotten it the worst. We ended up having to miss my nephew's first birthday party last weekend (and it sounds like they're all sick over there as well). I spent the rest of the week coordinating our joint-exhibit promotion with Imagekind, rolling out the new member list for EBSQ Juried Artists, and then the weekend doing a manual database audit. Fun fun fun!  So right now, I just want to revel in my fabulously clean (and paint-free) kitchen table, read my feeds, and drink a cup of cocoa. At least for a little while before I succumb to Abbey's superior powers of persuation.

Just wanted to show off the interview I did with Anne Zelenka (disclosure: she's on EBSQ's advisory board) for Web Work Daily:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/10/25/from-the-field-amie-gillingham/

Thanks, Anne!

What would you consider to be your 15 minutes of fame so far in life?

Personally, it was getting the chance to play Sister Robert Ann in Nunsense I & II for the local community productions back in 1993. They were seen by so many people, I constantly had strangers asking me, "Aren't you..." when I waited on them at the bookstore where I worked at the time. It was both really embarrassing and really cool :)

Professionally, it was pretty awesome when our company was written up for the October 2006 issue of Smart Money magazine, along with several other companies who are blazing trails in the internet art market.

We hope you'll join us tonight for Paul Helm's fantastic HOWTO on collagraph printing LIVE in the EBSQ Chat Room TONIGHT! We really appreciate that Paul will be staying up into the wee hours and joining us live from the UK to share his love for this unique method of printmaking. Hope to see you there!

Please Make a Note of the Time by your Zone:

Pacific 6 pm
Mountain 7 pm
Central 8 pm
Eastern 9 pm
Or find out what time this is where you are.

I have noticed that since I got busy watching all of the activity at SXSW in real time roughly 10 days ago, I have been blogging less and less and twittering more. In some ways, I've noticed it fits my lifestyle very well. Who has time to blog deep thoughts when juggling a full-time business, a toddler, and an infant? There's also the admitted thrill of watching the pulse of web2.0 as it happens. The real world is beginning to take notice. I was amused beyond end to see the Tara Hunt/Robert Scoble twitter war make the Wall Steet Journal because I had been watching the thing unfold in real time in my friends' feed. We even twittered our most recent EBSQ Live event as it happened.

Following the lead of innovators 30boxes and mag.nolia, EBSQ even created its own official feed for news and service updates. And now the burden is upon me to explain twitter to a sub-group of people to whom I have had a hard time explaining the likes of Squidoo lenses or why blogging will help their art careers. It should be an interesting conversation that I'll no doubt document on twitter.

Birthday Girl by Christina Friedrichsen 

Join us for tonight's rocking HOWTO presentation by Imagekind's own Aleks Davidovich on Imaging Best Practices for Art  &  Photography Print Production

Tonight Monday, March 12, at 9pm Eastern (6pm Pacific)
EBSQ Chat Room 

As always, this event is FREE, ONLINE, and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

And while you're there, be sure to wish our very own chat hostess with the mostess, Melissa Morton, a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So, the decision has been made to change EBSQ's legal structure from LLC to c-corp.

I'm of two minds over this. I know without a doubt it's the best thing for the growth of the company. We NEED to bring in more people since this three ring circus can't handle the workload, let alone do everything we need to do to scale and bring in new technologies. We haven't done a code overhaul since 2004, making us antiquated in tech years. The servers act like they're crawling through mud some days when we're dealing with heavy image uploads. Our site has grown so organically and with so much squeaky-wheel grease that the internal/external architecture looks and acts like a cheap addition to an old house done by shoddy contractors who double billed you. And even if we wouldn't have had the catastrophic dev server loss in 05 right before a full-site re-code relaunch, we'd still be at a point where we'd need to bring in more people. It's hard to get anything new done when I'm still bogged down doing customer service, tech support, maintenace tasks, corporate blogging, and admin stuff pretty much entirely on my own, and my two co-workers are just as bogged down doing their things. Our customers deserve so much more than we're able to give them. And if we don't want to be left behind, we simply have to evolve.

At the same time, it's terrifying. EBSQ is my baby, and I am not a trusting mama. I am someone who has been let down so many times in my life that my unofficial mantra has become, "If you want it done, you have to do it yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you." I think this mindset is both a blessing and a curse. I am very focused and passionate about what I do. But I am also overwhelmed by how much I have to do on a daily basis and none of it seems to be getting done very well. Bring full-time care of a toddler and an infant into the mix, and my days are nuts. Bill says I am a control freak. While I think that may be true on some levels, I think the root of the problem is that I have trust issues and a fear of delegation. For so long, it's been my company, my vision. What is going to happen when we bring  more people into the mix? How am I going to be able to allow them their say? How am I going to just be able to give up control? Am I ready to take that leap of faith and trust? It's going to be an interesting transition, that's for sure!

This event is FREE and open to the public!