81–90 of 165 posts
While $1B seems excessive, and more of a number to make a point, it does seem outrageously egregious to send her a bill for her own photo on her own website that she donated for public use. It would be like coming home to find a naked vagrant sitting on your couch, demanding that you pay him rent.
I will just point out that the two statements that "the photos are in the public domain" and "she never abandoned her photo copyrights" are not in opposition. Orphaned works (abandoned copyright) can be subject to re-copyrighting by another party from what my laymen's understanding of copyright law is. Instead she specifically stipulated that these photos are in the public domain and so Getty is obviously operating u…
But then, unfortunately, this could be filed as a simple DMCA notification error and would not entitle the author to 150,000$ in damages per work. She will receive only an apology. And this is how Getty gets to strongarm the less rich artists and only have to say "sorry" when they can't win.
Isn't the problem here that she donated all her photos to the Library of Congress without clarifying what that meant? Apparently, the LoC thought that the photos were placed in the public domain, and the photographer thought she was retaining the copyrights. Also, why the hell is Getty charging for public domain photos? Are they not aware that people can use those without paying Getty?
It shows their #1 priority was collecting as many pieces of work as they could, and their #2 effort was reinforcing their payment system (a la threats if you don't pay).
No where in that equation was the artist, the art itself, or any related interests. They only cared about being the middleman and acted like it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only about twice the statutory damages. And it looks like the article is only using $25,000 per work for that number. For willful infringement, statutory damages can go up to $150,000, which would be about $2.8 billion for 18,755 photos here. I'd say she's being fairly generous by offering to settle for a mere $1 billion!
Maybe she's taking a play out of their own book? "We could have sued you for this much, but instead we're offering you a chance to settle for only this amount."
I would have sued them for the full amount the law permitted for each image if the company goes under as a result that would act as example/discouragement for any other company that would think about doing that in the future.
People get fined ridiculous amounts all the time as discouragement so why shouldn't companies have the same happen to them their technically a person in the US no?
While $1B seems excessive, and more of a number to make a point, it does seem outrageously egregious to send her a bill for her own photo on her own website that she donated for public use. It would be like coming home to find a naked vagrant sitting on your couch, demanding that you pay him rent.
Yes, $1B sounds excessive... but that is also a valid legal strategy -- making your complaint cover everything under the sun, for as much damages as possible, expecting their lawyers to fight each point and amount, and hopefully the end result is something you actually find acceptable.
Now $18,755B would make for a nice discouraging lawsuit that make any other company think twice about pulling this ever again.
I want Getty to go bankrupt as a result of the lawsuit. I'm evil I know but it's what they would have done so I see nothing wrong with that.
Using some examples from the comments of the article: It's akin to Getty setting up a small tent inside of Central Park, and asking people that walk by to pay an entry fee. But Getty goes 1 step further: They hire strongarm guys to go around the park and tell people (one-on-one) that they skipped out on their 5 dollar entry fee and they can 'settle' with them right now or be taken to court. It's terrible. I can't ima…
Couldn't be a more evil company to be sued. Wish Thier would represent him and kick a hole in Getty!
The photographer is a female, and the person you named spells his last name Thiel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Edit: "negligence" means you should have known of the risk. "Recklessness" means you knew of the risk but acted anyway. No, "negligence", in law, means you failed to act according to the duty of care you owed, which can include knowing about a risk but failing to act reasonably to mitigate it as much as it can include not knowing about a risk that one reasonably should have known about. Negligence and recklessness…
I'm not sure which law school taught you that, but it's just wrong. Here's a law review article that discusses the differences in mental state between negligence and recklessness: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
The poster above you is correct as to the test for negligence in civil causes of action.
The likely cause of this mix-up is that false-licensing touches upon the law of misrepresentation, which contains as a subset, rules for both fraudulent misrepresentation as well as negligent misrepresentation.
35. Since approximately 1988, Ms. Highsmith has made her photographs available to
the public for free through the U.S. Library of Congress, thereby exercising her exclusive rights
under 17 U.S.C. § 106 to distribute copies of her copyrighted work to the public by sale or other
transfer of ownership, and to authorize others to do so
(Not a lawyer).
[0] http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...