Getty Sued For $1 Billion For Selling Publicly Donated Photos (thestack.com) 216
An anonymous reader writes: Online stock media library Getty Images is facing a $1 billion lawsuit from an American photographer for illegally selling copyright for thousands of photos. The Seattle-based company has been sued by documentary photographer Carol Highsmith for 'gross misuse', after it sold more than 18,000 of her photos despite having already donated them for public use. Highsmith's photos which were sold via Getty Images had been available for free via the Library of Congress. Getty has now been accused of selling unauthorized licenses of the images, not crediting the author, and for also sending threatening warnings and fines to those who had used the pictures without paying for the falsely imposed copyright.ArsTechnica has more details.
Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Informative)
Glad to see a copyright troll getting what it deserves.
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Not like anything will actually happen to them.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Informative)
She's only asking for like $400M, but a previous lawsuit allows treble damages for any further suits against Getty. Sooooooooo.
Re: Rules for thee, not for me (Score:2)
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
She is still the copyright owner.
Getty took her work and sold it without her permission as well as harassing others she freely gave it away to. Damaging her reputation, as well her customers. The fact that she gave them away for free doesn't mean mean that they didn't have value.
Heck in slashdot when we find a company breaking the GPL we want Blood from them.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
THIS is what copyright law is (well, was) designed to protect. An individual or company wrongly selling, misrepresenting, harassing or even suing others over works it does not have control over the copyright of is exactly what copyright law was targeted at. THIS is how copyright could 'protects the artists' and foster more artistic contribution to the world as a whole.
Getty would do well to quickly offer up a very reasonable/rationa settlement - such as repaying every customer who paid for images they didn't have the right to sell and making a sizable donation to some art charity/foundation. Anything else, and they undermind the very laws that provide for their business model and very existence.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Getty would do well to quickly offer up a very reasonable/rationa settlement - such as repaying every customer who paid for images they didn't have the right to sell and making a sizable donation to some art charity/foundation. Anything else, and they undermind the very laws that provide for their business model and very existence.
Not enough, sorry. Not when we have court judgments standing against ordinary citizens for non-commercial infringement of over $10,000 per violation.
The $1 billion would be a bargain for them to get off so easy, compared to how Getty and similar companies have treated individuals. Frankly, if I were Ms. Highsmith, I'd take the billion dollars and track down every individual non-commercial "infringer" she can find who has been the victim of such lawsuits and use the money from the lawsuit to pay them back. If there was any money left over, I'd create a victims defense fund for people who are sued for ridiculous amounts for non-commercial infringement.
It's not that I'm pro-piracy. I'm not. But I think non-commercial copyright infringement with no intent to cause harm (and sometimes unknowing infringement, in the case of photos just grabbed over the internet) shouldn't be putting individuals in the poorhouse. If the infringing fees were more reasonable (particularly for first-time offenders), that'd be one thing... but they're not. I'd be all in favor of an escalating set of penalties for repeat offenders, even.... but suing for thousands of dollars over a single violation?
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I also feel this is not enough.
Getty was either doing this with full knowledge that it was breaking the law, or it was grossly negligent-- criminally negligent-- in failing to determine that it could not have copyright on these images no matter how the images might have come to it. A company that makes its profits by licensing use of copyrighted material does not search the Library of Congress before purchasing or otherwise claiming copyright on its stuff? The only way that could happen is if the company d
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It's not illegal to sell works in the public domain, particularly if these were "transformed" in any manner beforehand. Getty could argue that they transformed the work by selective editing, which is the process by which you choose amongst many options. Any transformation can initiate a new copyright. This might come down to technical process copyright law, by which you take a Tiff and convert it into a jpeg, versus misrepresentation (claiming you own the rights to something you don't). When publishers
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Offering your work for free isn't going to public domain.
GNU is free but not public domain.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Interesting)
The story does use a lot of funny wording which implies that they had been donated to the Public Domain, but if you click through to sources, it looks more like they were still under copyright, offered through some kind of free-as-in-beer license.
Looks like. It's really hard to see WTF the actual status is. What shitty, lazy reporting! But my guess is they're not PD, because the lawyer would have checked before he sued, that being the responsible and common sense thing to d-- why is everyone laughing at me?
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Yes, it appears they were not in public domain. And Getty violated a copyright notice that gave a broad class of individuals license to use these photos without payment in certain ways. But also Getty claimed a false copyright on material that was copyrighted by the creator.
There is no problem here in understanding "WTF the actual status is" for anyone who has a passing familiarity with FOSS copyrights. And those who benefit from the use of FOSS copyrights should become somewhat familiar with FOSS. Such as
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They are indeed still protected by Copyright under the creator's name.
Her making them freely available is a gift to humanity, but does not make them public domain. As far as the typical copyright infringement argument of "potential lost income". . . Well, actually, she can make that one. They damaged her reputation as a professional photographer.
Their main argument will be much simpler: Dear Getty, how much income did you derive from charging people for these copyrighted pieces of mine? Please include
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They're statutory damages.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
She gets $400 million for what? She's asserting that other people were wronged, that she had zero stake (she let the images out for free), and that she thus somehow is owed $400 million?
Even if she licensed them for public use she is still the copyright owner of the images so she is the one that has the standing to sue for copyright infringement against Getty. The others could just sue to clarify their rights, stop legal actions against them, and maybe, if lucky, recover their legal costs. The photographer is the one in a position to extract a truly punitive judgement against Getty.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Informative)
"Publication and other forms of distribution: Ms. Highsmith has stipulated that her photographs are in the public domain. (See P&P Collection Files.) Photographs of sculpture or other works of art may be restricted by the copyright of the artist."
https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/r... [loc.gov]
This may cause problems with her standing to sue.
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Indeed, I was going to say something similar. If she released the images into the public domain, or even retained copyright but licensed them under something like a Creative Commons license with no restrictions on redistribution, then it would seem that Getty Images would be completely within its legal rights to sell them. Just like anyone who wants to can sell a BSD Unix distro if they can find someone gullible enough to buy it.
Now, if they're threatening people in order to collect licensing fees, *then*
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She gets $400 million for what? She's asserting that other people were wronged, that she had zero stake (she let the images out for free), and that she thus somehow is owed $400 million?/
They sent her a letter and a bill. That is her stake.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Statutory damages. She allowed the Library of Congress to distribute the photos for free, but the Getty never had permission, and certainly never had permission to charge for them. The $400 million+ is straight up statutory damages for the number of violations.
Since they did this for commercial purposes, what should happen is criminal prosecution.
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Maybe charge them not only with criminal copyright infringement, but RICO Act violations too if it turns out to be part of a pattern (which OverlordQ's allusion upthread to a "previous lawsuit" implies there might be).
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Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Allegedly, the executives of Getty Images, Inc., who directed their subordinates to engage in criminal intimidation and racketeering based on false claims of copyright, are part of the criminal organization Getty Images, Inc.
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That would depend entirely on the specific terms under which she allowed the Library to distribute the images.
If she put them in the public domain, then she is no longer the copyright holder, because they are no longer under copyright, and GI cannot violate a copyright that doesn't exist.
If the terms under which the LoC distributes the images to not prohibit commercial redistribution (vanilla Creative Commons for example), then GI is likewise not violating copyright by selling them.
If either of those is the
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Exactly how she gave the images to the LoC, and exactly what the LoC means when it says the images are now in the public domain, will need to be explored in court. If she transferred the copyrights to the LoC, then she has no standing to sue for copyright violation. So she must be saying that she retained the copyrights and only gave an unlimited use license to everyone.
Getty Images needs to show that she transferred the actual copyrights to the LoC and therefore has no standing. That is likely to be a ver
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If the RIAA/MPAA can sue for billions of dollars of damages under the existing law, so should she. I feel like those laws should be changed, but at the moment they are what they are and if they're used against grandmas who never touched a computer, they should also be used against corporations with giant legal departments who clearly knew better.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Informative)
It's statutory damages as set by law. It's tripled because Getty is a repeat offender. Unlike the many cases of *AA vs. Grandma where the same statutory damages were applied, Getty is exactly the sort of defendant the lawmakers had in mind when they wrote the law and the evidence is much more clear.
If the courts do not award the full amount, they will demonstrate once and for all that natural people are second class citizens.
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Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't seen anyone else noting this, so...
She is a copyright holder, and have released the images under one license, that does not incur any payment, but restricts how people can use the images.
That does NOT prevent her from also licensing the images under a different license, which gives the licensee other rights. (Like, for instance, being allowed to modify, re-sell, or not give attribution.)
In the software world, there are plenty of examples of dual licensing, so this shouldn't be news to anyone.
She is the copyright holder, and what she could have charged for other licenses is her stake.
Then add punitive damages. Tripled because of Getty having lost other cases that means they were definitely made aware of transgressions, and any new transgressions of the same type have a high chance that they will considered willful.
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"Publication and other forms of distribution: Ms. Highsmith has stipulated that her photographs are in the public domain. (See P&P Collection Files.) Photographs of sculpture or other works of art may be restricted by the copyright of the artist." - LoC site
By declaring her works to be in the public domain she no longer has any say what is done with them.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't matter,
Punitive Damages are not about what the plaintiff wants. They are about dissuading the defendant from repeating their offence.
So how do you dissuade an an entity such as Getty? You savage their pocket book so badly that the board of directors take notice. For public corporations, you hit them so hard it affects their stock prices and subsequently their shareholders, who then would hopefully respond by replacing board members who allowed the President or CEO to take the offending actions.
In the case of corporations, the buck stops with the shareholders. There is no punishment until the shareholders feel the pain.
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Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to sue:
No, they're not. She licensed the Library of Congress to distribute them royalty free, but did not place them in the public domain. In fact, the license to the LoC specifically requires that they, and anyone they distribute the photos to, give her credit. So your premise is factually incorrect.
And what really pissed her off was when the Getty sent her a legal threat and demanded money for using her own photos on her own web site, when the Getty had no permission to use the photos in any way.
Honestly, a billion dollars in damages seems perfectly reasonable to me, and the Getty will hardly notice it.
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:4, Interesting)
Getty sent her a legal threat and demanded money for using her own photos on her own web site
That is the most delicious part of the entire story.
(Note also that this the online Getty image provider, not related to the Getty museum).
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Hardly notice a billion dollars? How big is Getty, really? That's a fucking lot of money.
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Hardly notice a billion dollars? How big is Getty, really? That's a fucking lot of money.
Not that big. Just a few years ago the company was sold for $3.3 billion. I don't know what their current estimated worth is, but I definitely imagine a billion-dollar loss would be noticeable.
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I'm not sure that's legally relevant. The only copyright-violation question is, do the terms under which the LoC distributes the images allow for commercial redistribution? If they do, then Getty Images is completely within their rights to sell the images. Just as you would be completely within your rights to sell a Linux distro.
Now, if they're trying to shake down people for licensing fees for images they don't hold the copyright or an enforcement contract on, then that's a completely different issue, a
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Though yes, if GI did not properly credit the artist as required by their license, then that would likely expose them to copyright infringement claims.
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There's part of me that wonders if Getty had some automated process sending out these notices, or if there actually was someone signing off on them. If it's the latter, do they just send out so many of these claims that they didn't realize they were sending a legal threat to the owner of the pictures?
Of course "they" didn't realize they were sending a legal threat to the owner of the picture. The copyright information had been stripped from the images and this is a really large corporation with lots of employees. The only way the employee sending out the notices would have known she was the copyright holder if they were keeping records along with the images, and keeping such records along with the images would be a field day for some district attorney deciding to raid them.
You don't keep easily access
Re:Rules for thee, not for me (Score:5, Informative)
For an imperfect analogy: If I loan my volunteer fire department use of my car, I haven't given up title, Nor have I indicated that anyone is now free to abscond the vehicle with impunity.
In fact, Getty not only stole these, by falsely asserting ownership rights, it's as if they took the car from my analogy, and drove it for Uber.
Her images are NOT public domain. They are her copyright, for which she waived license fees for re-use and distribution, via Library of Congress, per her attribution remain.
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In fact, Getty not only stole these, by falsely asserting ownership rights, it's as if they took the car from my analogy, and drove it for Uber.
No, because if it's a car, she is deprived of the use of that car while Getty is driving for Uber.
It's as if she had a Tesla with a magic 'clone' button, and Getty pressed the button and started driving the new clone for Uber. Except she had drawn a picture of a unicorn on her Tesla, so Getty's new Tesla is also decorated with a unicorn, and now she's throwing a hi
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The your analogy is bad:
It's as if she had a Tesla with a Magic clone button, Getty pressed it, took a car then tried to have her arrested for stealing their car.
Even if you don't believe copyright should be a thing, Getty are still in the wrong any way you look at it.
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Analogies to property are rather terrible, as copyright law is essentially nothing like property law, nor even patent or trademark law.
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If they were public domain they're free from copyright so thus Getty cannot claim ownership of them anyway.
While true, they could still sell access to their copy in that case. You can still profit off of collecting and distributing public domain materials.
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While true, they could still sell access to their copy in that case. You can still profit off of collecting and distributing public domain materials.
If by 'access' you mean charging people to come to their office and look at the picture, sure you are correct. Making copies of their copy is the very definition of copyright infringement in letter, spirit, moral, and natural law. Forgive the slight hyperbole, the point is the pictures are free to the public, but not public domain.
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Did you read what I was replying to before spouting off nonsense? The post I'm replying to is a hypothetical - Getty can sell copies of public domain images.
This photographer's photos are not that - but nobody here is claiming they are.
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My thought is they scraped public domain images from the LoC to "sell access" and totally missed that this was not public domain. But then they stupidly included all the scraped images in the index they sent over for copyright enforcement.
Kind of like the Family Guy gameplay footage fiasco [slashdot.org].
The intent of Copyright (Score:2)
Has historically little to do with the artists. We have trials recorded from a couple hundred years ago where companies buying copyrights (often artists were required to transfer ownership just to publish a book) wanted extended duration for Copyright and increases in penalties. Meanwhile, the artists giving up the copyright were left broke and their families received nothing from their works.
IMHO a long ago fix would have been to remove the ability of Copyright ownership by a company and make them to peo
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The intent of Copyright Has historically little to do with the artists.
Your statement reflects a common-sense but inaccurate understanding of the word "artists" in this context.
"Artist" is short for "Con artist", who tricks creators of cultural artifacts into surrendering their copyrights for pennies and then tricks users of those cultural artifacts into paying to access them. See also "rent seeker", "grifter" and "bridge seller".
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I have been trying to promote that as idea for years. I see no reason corporations should be allowed to own copyrights. They shouldn't be allowed to force licensing in perpetuity either.
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Ownership by the individual or individuals credited as the film's producer or producers and an exclusive license to a corporation for the life of the copyright would have exactly the same practical effect as a corporate owner. Or if you plan to abolish "work made for hire" entirely, even if the person doing the hiring is an individual, who would own copyright in a motion picture with a cast and crew of hundreds?
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Ownership by the individual or individuals credited as the film's producer or producers and an exclusive license to a corporation for the life of the copyright would have exactly the same practical effect as a corporate owner.
Perpetual licenses seems a very bad idea in the first place. I see no reason why they shouldn't have to be renegotiated yearly, by law, so if something becomes a success, the actual owner gets a bigger share.
Or if you plan to abolish "work made for hire" entirely, even if the person doing the hiring is an individual, who would own copyright in a motion picture with a cast and crew of hundreds?
I think one should be able to abolish "work made for hire after the fact", i.e. that only something made while in employ and on company time can be considered property of a company.
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They are the ones who a clearly at fault. They are a repeat offender. As a repeat offender the amount is in line with the law. Getty shouldn't have claimed that which they do not own. Think of how much revenue they have collected over the years while infringing on this ladies copyright. The whole system is corrupt and broken and this may shed light on it. More likely it will cause a change in the law where companies such a Getty will receive immunity for their thefts.
Getty threatened her is how she found out (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Getty threatened her is how she found out (Score:5, Informative)
Even more fun, in their original letter to her they said:
97. The Letter went on to state as follows: "Although this infringement might have
been unintentional, use of an image without a valid license is considered copyright infringement
in violation of the Copyright Act, Title 17, United States Code. This copyright law
entitles Alamy to seek compensation for any license infringement."
104. In the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the Letter, the answer to the
question "What if I didn't know?" includes the following language: "You may have employed a
third party, former worker or intern to design and develop your company's site. However, the
liability of any infringement ultimately falls on the company (the end user) who hired that party,
employee or intern." The answer to the question "What if I simply remove the image?"Â
includes the following language: "While we appreciate the effort of removing the material in
question from your site, we still need compensation. Your company has benefited by using our
imagery without our permission. As the unauthorized use has already occurred, payment for that
benefit is necessary."
Hoist by their own petard.
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They're relationship with LCS is a different matter entirely and they're acting on Getty's behalf.
I don't know the relationship, however, if LCS is acting on Getty's behalf, it means they are an authorized agent of Getty which makes Getty responsible for their behavior. Despite whatever LCS relationship exists, it is clear that Getty sold her images and therefore violated her copyright.
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With any luck, she will end up owning Getty;
You obviously have no idea how much money the Getty has. A billion dollars is not even enough to affect the CEOs bonus. Not even a speed bump. It's nearly petty cash.
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She may not "own" Getty but copyright law is pretty specific about statutory damages. Per work it can be $750 to $30,000. If she can prove that Getty was willful then the penalty can be up to $150,000 per infringement in this case, each sale. Of course the courts can reduce the amount to $200 per infringement. If Getty sold 1,000 photos of hers that's $200,000 minimum in statutory damages. By her lawyer's estimate, Getty could be liable for $468,875,000 at least .
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"DNS records show that LCS' listed address is 605 5th Avenue South, Suite 400 Seattle, Washington, which is Getty Images' corporate address."
Just speaking from personal experience, many times, 'corporate addresses' are some cheap-ass rent-a-virtual-office.
You can find a Papa John's, Apple Repair Tech, Divorce Lawyer, and Games Design Company all in the same address of buildings that look very much like that of Getty Images.
Getty screwed up (Score:5, Interesting)
If you dig around a bit, you'll see that the artist did not make her photos public domain [pdnonline.com]. She licensed them to the Library of Congress and gave a permissive license for anyone else to use them --- presumably including to sell them --- as long as users give notification that the these are the photographer's work. Nonetheless, she retains copyright. This is basically a BSD-style license. Getty is not only suing her for using her own copyrighted work, but is also not informing customers that they're her work, in violation of the license. She's suing to preserve the terms of her license.
Re:Getty screwed up (Score:5, Informative)
You should write article summaries for /.
Seriously.
Re:Getty screwed up (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, somebody should. The monkeys aren't doing a very good job.
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Well, somebody should. The monkeys aren't doing a very good job.
The monkeys were laid off years ago. The summaries are now written by rabid prairie dogs.
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I heard the prairie dogs were trying to unionize, so /. will be hiring mongooses (or mongeese) from India using H1-B visas. The prairie dogs will have to train their replacements...
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It wouldn't matter. Editors have re-written summaries that we've made nice and succinct, and turned them into a huge mess many times before.
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"Publication and other forms of distribution: Ms. Highsmith has stipulated that her photographs are in the public domain. (See P&P Collection Files.) Photographs of sculpture or other works of art may be restricted by the copyright of the artist."
https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/r... [loc.gov]
According to the LoC her work is very much in the public domain.
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The actual license paperwork that was attached as Exhibit B [imgur.com] to the court filing may not have actually put it in the public domain. Parts are similar, but there also were restrictions (single-use, attribution requirements) that in my IANAL opinion prevent it from actually being in the public domain.
As someone who has been on the wrong end (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who has been on the wrong end of a letter from Getty's lawyers concerning a set of images which were bought (on a CD) with the impression that they were already properly licensed, I hope she wins every fucking penny.
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Re:As someone who has been on the wrong end (Score:5, Interesting)
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Exactly. In fact, it was my web site creator who bought (several) commercial/shrink-wrapped CDs of "royalty free" images to use. It was 5-6 years before I got the letter asking for ~$2200 in fees for 3-4 images. Turns out royalty free simply means that a fee is not due for every single impression, but the images required a license for each image to be used.
Going to court would have cost me in the $10k-30k range, presuming I would win. Of course, the developer didn't even have all of the CDs any more, and th
Stock media (Score:2)
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More of a subscription license to whatever copyrighted images they have. Basically one stop shopping for licensed works to use in your print or web publications.
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That's the way it used to work. The web changed all that by cutting out the middleman so to speak. You didn't need to buy an entire DVD full of images 99.9% of which you'd never use. You could go to the website of a stock photos company and license only the photos you wanted to use. Getty is one of those companies.
I'm more curious how G
Re:Stock media (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm more curious how Getty ended up thinking they owned the copyright on those images.
I assume it went something like this:
1) Scrape all freely shared images from LoC, assuming they're public domain.
2) Sell licenses to access their copy of the photos without mentioning that the images were freely available elsewhere
3) "Accidentally" include these images in the index they provide to their copyright enforcement arm.
$1 billion is actually pretty reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, if she gets less than $22,500 * 18,000 = $405 million out of this, there's been a gross miscarriage of justice either in her case or the Tenenbaum cause. Unlike filesharing, what Getty Images did is precisely the sort of thing copyright law was made to prohibit - profiting off the work of others.
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Unfortunately, for the rich and powerful -- to paraphrase the head of the FBI -- no reasonable judge would find them to be infringing. :-\
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Copyright law allows her to sue for up to $150,000 per violation, which would be a cool $2.7 billion.
Far more than that. 18,000 is the number of images they appropriated.
Now add $150,000 for every time they've sold "rights" to one of those images, either individually, or in any and all catalogs they might have been in.
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Getty and NASA? (Score:4, Interesting)
Getty now sells NASA on-orbit and other spaceflight images. These images are available through NASA, already bought and paid for with tax dollars. How Getty sells any of them at lower res than NASA supplies for $500+ is beyond comprehension.
Public Domain (Score:2)
The idea we see here, that she licensed her work to the LoC, does not seem to be accurate. According to the LoC it seems that she has relinquished her rights and intentionally placed her works in the public domain. This would mean that the works can be used for any purpose, commercial or private, without her having any say. This does not excuse the false copyright claim but it would also remove any standing she would have had.
From the LoC site.
"Publication and o
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It's going to depend on interpretation of Exhibit B [imgur.com] that is mentioned in the original complaint. I'd think that it would trump the LoC webpage if the LoC can't produce a superseding agreement regarding the copyrights. It does say that the Highsmith "dedicate to the public all rights, including copyrights throughout the world". I'm not sure if "dedicate" legally means the same as putting it in the public domain or otherwise relinquishing the copyrights. It also includes restrictions for single-copy reprod
Following Disney's lead (Score:2)
Disney have been doing this for years with public domain and other content and getting away with it using their army of lawyers crush their opponents. Their stolen works, which will get them suing you including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stephenson, Winnie the Poo and even European fairy tales that are hundred of years old.
avoid this hassle (Score:3)
I get away without having to deal with all this hassle by being such a shit photographer that nobody tries to sell my photos.
Re:FUCKING MILLENNIAL SNOWFLAKES (Score:5, Insightful)
Look up public domain images.
Pick some you like.
Use them.
Get threatening letters from Getty for using them.
How the FUCK does that not hurt the average person who just wanted to use a few free images?
Re: F***ING MILLENNIAL SNOWFLAKES (Score:3)
F***ing millennial snowflakes getting their panties in a wad because someone else does something they don't like that doesn't hurt them. It must be a form of bullying. Sue! Sue! Sue! Whine! Whine! Whine! Sue! Sue! Sue!
Did you even read the original post and source material? Getty attempted to extract compensation from the original creator, and legal owner, of the work. They also charged others for use of the work without any legal right to do so or any thought of royalty payment to the owner of the work. Its got nothing to do with millenials.
Go try and sell copies of any Hollywood movie on a commercial scale without permission. You'll be headed for jail. The only difference here is it isn't a billion dollar corporat
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Anyone who gets the, ahem, pleasure of browsing at -1 consistently know this troll has been posting the same crap in nearly every article's comment section for like a week now. It's nothing against this particular article, just lowest-common-denominator trolling on the level of links to goatse, etc. Don't feed it.
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Please do not feed the ACs. They will only multiply.
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There are roughly 18,000 pictures. 1,000,000,000 / 18,000 = 55555,55.
A bit of rounding suggests they're being sued for 50,000 per image.
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Re:A billion in damages?! (Score:5, Informative)
151. GettyÃââs violations of 17 U.S.C. ÃÂ 1202 entitle Ms. Highsmith to recover, among
other things, and if she so elects as provided in 17 U.S.C. à1203(c)(3)(B), ÃâÅ"an award of
statutory damages for each violation of section 1202 in the sum of not less than $2,500 or more
than $25,000.ÃâÂ
152. When Getty is found to have committed one violation of 17 U.S.C. ÃÂ 1202 for
each of the 18,755 results of a search for ÃâÅ"Carol M. HighsmithÃâ on GettyÃââs website, Ms.
Highsmith would be entitled to recover, among other things, and if she so elects, aggregate
statutory damages against Getty of not less than forty-six million, eight hundred eighty-seven
thousand five hundred dollars ($46,887,500) and not more than four hundred sixty-eight
million, eight hundred seventy-five thousand dollars ($468,875,000).
153. Additionally, because Getty has already had a final judgment entered against it in
the past three years in the Morel v. Getty case, the Court may treble the statutory damages in
this case.
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The previous final judgement & treble damages is really going to fuck Getty.
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The amount will, of course, be determined during discovery when Getty is forced to reveal the number of times they actually sold a license for each of her images. The three-times-$400M amount bandied about is assuming maximum value on each image, and one violation per image. That's a place to start, and gives a scale for the potentially massive size a judgement could take, but is unlikely to be found to be accurate in the end.
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The amount will, of course, be determined during discovery when Getty is forced to reveal the number of times they actually sold a license for each of her images. The three-times-$400M amount bandied about is assuming maximum value on each image, and one violation per image. That's a place to start, and gives a scale for the potentially massive size a judgement could take, but is unlikely to be found to be accurate in the end.
The actual value is irrelevant when calculating the statutory damages. This is why Jammie Thomas-Rasset who got sued and lost for pirating 24 songs owes $1.92 million. (Which will never get paid.) The quoted $468 million is the ceiling for damages provided for by law, regardless of real damages, without factoring in willful infringement, as in the Thomas-Rasset case. Using the Thomas-Rasset award for willful infringement as the benchmark (which a judge would consider perfectly reasonable), the damages p
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As a counter-point, I've worked with companies who contacted my wife and I because they wanted to use a photo we posted for an ad campaign of theirs. We agreed, they paid us (not a lot of money, but a decent amount for one image), and everyone walked away happy. It makes it all the more infuriating when you realize just how easy it is to do the right thing and credit/pay photographers for their work. It's sheer laziness coupled with a "we won't get caught and if we do we'll lawyer our way out" attitude tha
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Very apropos for her - she seems to have more testicular fortitude than most lawyers.
Oh, It's Simple, All Right... (Score:2)
The technicalities of her grant of rights requires attribution, and do not give any right to sub-license the works. They are well and truly screwed in this case. Even if they claim that they were merely acting as an agent for someone else who submitted the pics to them, they failed to do proper due diligence to ensure that whoever that person was actually had the rights to begin with.
And this sure appears to be a case brought by someone with legitimate standing who wants to have very severe punishment imp