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Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

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Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#151

Post by gozur88 »

steego wrote: post #4
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

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.

Copyright thugs have been punishing people with outrageous fines and settlements for years. $1B doesn't seem excessive. Live by the sword. Die by the sword.

That's my take as well. It's bad enough companies make legitimate but lazy mistakes like filing DMCA strikes against works with the same name as something they own. But it seems like the absolute minimum you ought to do is make sure beyond a doubt you own what you claim to own.

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#152

Post by dredmorbius »

zyxley wrote: post #91
Smushman wrote: post #14

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…

> I can't imagine how to solve that without a total change of copyright laws Wouldn't prosecution for fraud be enough?

Only if it's an effective and accessible protection.

Note that the victims of Getty's RICO tactics here don't have standing to sue for copyright violation. Only for the possible fraud elements. This reduces the number of parties with significant legal protections tremendously.

The case has to proceed quickly and effectively. Long delays or appeals will steal the thunder.

The sting's got to be harsh. I'm liking the billion-dollar amount, as that's enough to make virtually any company sit up and take notice.

But the real problem is that low-grade penny-ante DMCA takedown, C&D, or other strong-arming, on questionable bases, are likely to remain profitable for a long time.

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#154

Post by tombrossman »

imajes wrote: post #140
grengineer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to exhibit B [1] - The instrument of gift - she did not intend to relinquish her rights as there are specific conditions for reproduction of the works contained in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Also explicit permission is given to the library to make copies of the work for security,preservation etc. [1] Google Gov-Uscourts-Nysd-460787-1-2

You say that but that's not the reading I make of this contract. "I hereby dedicate to the public all rights, including copyrights,... that i posses in this collection". that seems pretty clear cut to me. Conditions for reproduction only seem to express the general ways the content should be available for users of the library. Nothing limiting availability, in fact it's promoting methods of being available. So that l…

Interesting to see that Alamy are involved with this. I have firsthand experience dealing with them first as a photo contributor and later as a copyright holder finding Alamy to be in breach of both UK copyright law and also their own contributor agreement.

Alamy claim they delete all copies of contributor photos from their servers 45 days after you terminate your contract but failed to do this, and continued serving my images for many months after our agreement ended. When I contacted them they first claimed it was Google's fault (cached images) and them later admitted they had done it but were still defiant and claimed they could do it because finding my images was 'difficult'.

They are a large photo agency and their infrastructure is first-class, so I had some interesting email and telephone exchanges with Level 3 and AWS when I sent them DMCA takedown notices and explained that there was no 'safe harbor' for them and I had absolute proof (the Exif metadata with my name and copyright notice was still preserved in the images and I provided direct alamy.com/... links to them hosted by Alamy).

Blog post here, if you want the whole story including replies from Alamy. They seem like one of the better photo agencies but damn, they really don't like being held to the same standards they hold the public to. https://www.tombrossman.com/blog/2014/alamy-copyright-and-ex...

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#155

Post by imajes »

grengineer wrote: post #145
imajes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that but that's not the reading I make of this contract. "I hereby dedicate to the public all rights, including copyrights,... that i posses in this collection". that seems pretty clear cut to me. Conditions for reproduction only seem to express the general ways the content should be available for users of the library. Nothing limiting availability, in fact it's promoting methods of being available. So that l…

I am not a lawyer either but I think even if you adhere to the declaratory theory of law and take this waiver literally word for word I hereby dedicate to the public all rights, including copyrights throughout the world, that I possess in this collection. I have the feeling the lawyer who drafted this instrument of gift was a very competent one as in USA law the copyright of a collection or compilation does not affec…

Yeah. you're absolutely right, that clause will be the point of argument. This is where my lack of legal education fails me though, since it is not clear what it means when saying _material contributed by the author_ and what _preexisting material_ means.

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#156

Post by imajes »

xg15 wrote: post #144
imajes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that but that's not the reading I make of this contract. "I hereby dedicate to the public all rights, including copyrights,... that i posses in this collection". that seems pretty clear cut to me. Conditions for reproduction only seem to express the general ways the content should be available for users of the library. Nothing limiting availability, in fact it's promoting methods of being available. So that l…

> My quick read of it seems that if they can come up with some kind of argument that they are selling derivative work (including perhaps some kind of unique identification layer, or meta data perhaps ... ?), OR that they are selling a reproduction. tenuous, but that may be their justification. Wouldn't this make all electronically transmitted media into "derivative works", though? This sounds like such a reading woul…

as broad as that yes, but if you enhance the work during transmission (e.g. by including meta data about the work) you may be able to argue derivation. i think it's an area where clearly technology and the ability to reproduce like-for-like fails the reading of law as it stands today.

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#157

Post by xg15 »

imajes wrote: post #156
xg15 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My quick read of it seems that if they can come up with some kind of argument that they are selling derivative work (including perhaps some kind of unique identification layer, or meta data perhaps ... ?), OR that they are selling a reproduction. tenuous, but that may be their justification. Wouldn't this make all electronically transmitted media into "derivative works", though? This sounds like such a reading woul…

as broad as that yes, but if you enhance the work during transmission (e.g. by including meta data about the work) you may be able to argue derivation. i think it's an area where clearly technology and the ability to reproduce like-for-like fails the reading of law as it stands today.

This still seems shaky to me: wouldn't then, e.g. the Google image search pipeline perform an enormous number of copyright violations every day? They download images from a huge number of different rights holders, store them on google servers, recode them to produce thumbnails and distribute the recoded images via the image search UI. By your logic, they'd have to ask every single rights builder for permission to create derived works before they can include their images in image search.

Additionally, every time I download something from the web and store it on my hard drive, my OS will enrich it with metadata: file name and path, timestamps, local user, permissions, etc. So unless a site author grants all visitors the permission to create derived works, I'd be infringing just by visiting their web site.

Finally, if you assume that only some metadata counts as creating a derived work, Getty would have to prove that all users they threatened did in fact use Getty's "enhanced" version of the image and not the original. I find it very unlikely that the photographer herself would have used Getty's version and not herselfes, so I don't think they did that.

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#158

Post by mthoms »

xg15 wrote: post #157
imajes wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as broad as that yes, but if you enhance the work during transmission (e.g. by including meta data about the work) you may be able to argue derivation. i think it's an area where clearly technology and the ability to reproduce like-for-like fails the reading of law as it stands today.

This still seems shaky to me: wouldn't then, e.g. the Google image search pipeline perform an enormous number of copyright violations every day? They download images from a huge number of different rights holders, store them on google servers, recode them to produce thumbnails and distribute the recoded images via the image search UI. By your logic, they'd have to ask every single rights builder for permission to cre…

I'm not sure about your other points but image search thumbnails have been found by the courts to be fair use. https://www.eff.org/cases/kelly-v-arriba-soft

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#159

Post by chrismcb »

wavefunction wrote: post #46

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…

Yes, those two statements are in direct opposition. A work in public domain has no copyright. If she kept the copyright, the works are not in public domain.

Re: Photographer Suing Getty Images for $1B

#160

Post by chrismcb »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #44

Honestly, I hope she wins, and then donates a huge chunk of it to some worthy cause just to further piss on Getty. It's okay that Getty lists high quality images that are public domain or restriction free as part of their search engine, but it is beyond ethically wrong to charge money for them.

Why is it unethical to charge for public domain images? I'm not saying this is what happened here, but there are many reasons to charge for public domain images, and for someone to pay. One big reason is for proof they are public domain. If my business was using images, I would want to make sure I have the right to republish those images. Even if that means I have to pay for public domain images. Getty is providing a service and they are charging for it. Sure, perhaps you can go elsewhere to get those same images for free... Then you should do so if you don't want to pay the fee. But there is nothing unethical about charging for public domain images... Now sueing people because they didn't not pay you for those images is wrong. The federal good government needs to get involved in this as well.
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