When the news hit that a photographer was suing BuzzFeed for $3.6 million for reusing one of his images, some on the internet reacted with fear and horror. Because many of those people - and websites - are notoriously loose with reusing images, and they like to hide behind the blithe view that it's all "fair use."
These debates about the bounds of fair use will always be important, but they obscure a very unfair dynamic that is squeezing artists - and turning the web into a battleground between humans and machines.
