rip, mix and burn

- the problems with copyright and the user empowered new media beast

I am at a concert or, say, a comedy performance by my favorite comic, steven wright. I raise my cellphone to the air to record five seconds of the show and then mms it to one of my girfriends so she can see what I'm up to. She loves it, and posts it to youtube, making sure to send it out to all of her friends. Her friends are all over the place - in the US, the UK, Europe, Australia and Asia. They in turn embed it into their myspace or bebo or friendster page or whatever, some sending it out as a bulletin too to god knows where. I think at least one of my friends in school planned to be an astronaut, so perhaps we enter the realm of space law too. A couple of people edit the clip into their own video mash creations, posting either on youtube or something like splashcast. Maybe it makes the headline show of their new internet channel, or whatever.

So from all of that - exactly how many laws have I breached and how many times to I deserve to be sued?

and more importantly, what will steven think of it? I'm assuming his work doesn't fall anywhere into the creative commons...