Fair Use....some lessons

So the other shoe has dropped in the Lane Hartwell / Richter Scales saga (see here for our original post). Lane Hartwell's disputed snapshot has been replaced by one of Kara Swisher, and the video has been reposted. This is exactly what we thought would happen:

Richter Scale...take her photo out, get the guy to send you one of his own, and resend your brilliant video...

As for Lane...what was she thinking - biggest opportunity ever to get her name in lights, and she winds up getting a reputation as a total killjoy to hordes of people across the planet who previously had never heard of her.

Here are some lessons in the 'Net economy, and I think they need to be Noted Well.

(i) You can't stop people building on the media on the 'Net. The takedown impacted YouTube, the piece of media instantly popped up elsewhere

(ii) A piece of media, even if copyrighted, has zero value if the friction of using it is too high and the cost of replacement is very low. If anybody wants to grandstand on component media they need to ensure that it cannot be replaced easily, ie adds significant value to the new work.

(iii) I believe it eventually became clear that Fair Use was correctly applied here, which has interesting implications going forward - ie if you don't want your stuff re-used, don't put it on the 'Net..

(iv) However, it is considered polite to reference sources, even fairly immaterial ones - this was the major hit Richter Scales took.

(v) The Neteconomy game is different - Lane Hartwell's (re)action, though understandable, was very Old Economy - i.e. try and control it, rather than try and use the marketing kudos to buff up her karma in the Netspace. In fact, I think she has hurt herself even more, by now trying to bill Richter Sounds - she has (probably, imho) signalled that she is now someone quite a few companies would not want to work with - too much friction.

(vi) An oldie but goodie - lawyers are a last, not a first resort.