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Getty Images, one of the largest providers of commercial stock photos, is now facing a $1 Billion dollar (US) copyright infringement lawsuit after being caught selling a photographer's work without permission.
According to the story at art and culture web site Hyperallergic.com:
In December, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge.
Highsmith has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against both Alamy and Getty for "gross misuse" of 18,755 of her photographs.
Incidentally, while you're at Hyperallergic.com, be sure to check out From a Pineapple to a Six-Pack, 23 Buildings that Resemble the Things They Sell.
The legal complaint is available on Document Cloud.
Also covered at: Ars Technica .
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Friday July 29 2016, @12:34PM
The numbers are staggering. It reminds me of the 1B$ ipod story. The numbers are so insane that if you would count all images together, you'd get a monetary value exceeding the world economy. That is insane.
That said, there is _no_ excuse for abusing one's work and Getty Images has been caught (and punished) before. That makes them a repeat infringer and abuser. The monetary claim should be replaced with an injunction to handle any and all of the goods they have been abusing. Getty Images, and its subsidiaries, without permission to handle any images ever in whatever form is a dead shell. That would be a fitting result in my opinion.
The monetary value is fictional because the images are already in the public domain. That makes the "crime" heinous is that Getty misappropriates the public domain, they abuse the wealth and content of our society, our common heritage. That is something nobody should be allowed to do. Our society can not and should not have a price-tag associated with it. Therefore, squash the abuser by eliminating the abuser's business.
(Score: 4, Informative) by zocalo on Friday July 29 2016, @12:51PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Friday July 29 2016, @01:07PM
I know what the reasoning behind the value is. However, that does not make it right in my opinion.
My objection is that monetary valuation on a non-monetary item is a fallacy. My argument is that the public domain has no monetary value, but it has a societal value.
My reasoning is therefore that the infringer/abuser must pay a different "price", which is equally expressed in societal valuation, which in this case would mean an injunction to handle the goods that are being abused as a whole. This practice is common in criminal justice, where a perpetrator is prohibited from going near the goods (or person) she abused. Since "corporations are people", the same punishment should apply. And before you go "but this is a civil case", I know, but civil cases could learn a lot from criminal ones, especially in this case, where the "rules of conduct" have been broken.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 29 2016, @03:54PM
My argument is that the public domain has no monetary value, but it has a societal value.
These images were not in the public domain. They were under copyright by the photographer and a permissive license was granted to the Library of Congress.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday July 29 2016, @07:23PM
The Library of Congress website's page on this [loc.gov] makes that confusing.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday July 29 2016, @06:54PM
In this case, the figure is probably fair. Getty sent her a bill for $120 for the use of her own photo and there were tens of thousands of images. I doubt she'll be awarded that much, but juries usually don't award more than what you ask for. And also consider that Getty wasn't asking for the $120 for an exclusive license, so they could be potentially getting it 3 or 4 times for any given image.
Most likely, they'll settle it for a fraction of that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday July 29 2016, @01:23PM
There's also an obvious followup: Getty was firing off cease-and-desist letters demanding payment. Well, if anybody responded with payment, they now have obvious grounds for suit based on a fraudulent legal representation that they have copyright on images they don't actually own. So yeah, they should get into real trouble, like potential-for-bankruptcy kind of real trouble.
Although, is it really more absurd than Comedy Central suing CBS for Stephen Colbert using without permission a fictional character known as "Stephen Colbert" that Stephen Colbert used to portray on Comedy Central?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 29 2016, @06:37PM
How fortunate for CBS that going forward Stephen Colbert will portray Stephen Colbert, the identical twin cousin of Stephen Colbert instead.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday July 30 2016, @02:47PM
Although, is it really more absurd than Comedy Central suing CBS for Stephen Colbert using without permission a fictional character known as "Stephen Colbert" that Stephen Colbert used to portray on Comedy Central?
Doesn't the Redstone family's National Amusements own both Viacom (Comedy Central's parent) and CBS anyway?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Friday July 29 2016, @01:00PM
What the damages are about is that the copyright information about the photographs has been falsified, which itself incurs statutory damages under the DMCA, regardless of any royalties due to the photographer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Friday July 29 2016, @01:03PM
The photographs are not in the public domain. The public has been granted a licence to reproduce them for free, provided proper attribution is given. This may be a technicality, but it is this kind of technicality the GPL rests on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Friday July 29 2016, @01:15PM
That is, indeed, a technicality, by which the whole infringement case can be brought. It is a construct for handling an imperfect system. In essence, the images are free for anyone to use in any way, /except/ claiming them to be yours.
All copyleft licenses base their effectiveness on very strong copyright law. In and by themselves, these licenses are a very strong statement about the state of things in copyright-land. They exist to use a protective system to obtain the opposite and that makes these licenses a stroke of genius. But the fact that they are required should be a very stern warning about the state of affairs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday July 29 2016, @01:27PM
I think part of the penalty should be that all of the images (that are not the plaintiffs) actually *do* get put in the public domain if they can't pay their whole fine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 29 2016, @02:28PM
There may be a problem with that plan. Obviously, the defendant is CLAIMING these thousands of images as their own. I would suspect that a lot of their other imaginary property also belongs to other people and/or companies.
Is it possible that the defendant actually owns nothing of their own? IN that case, none of "their" property could be legitimately put into the public domain.
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Friday July 29 2016, @01:11PM
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says that in the US, statutory damages for infringement are $750-30,000 per work. For ~19,000 photos that puts Getty in the hole immediately for between $14.25-570m.
Wilful infringement - and given Getty's apparent (and repeated) behaviour here I think any competent lawyer wouldn't have much problems convincing a judge and jury of that - are "up to" $150,000 per work, putting a theoretical cap on this case of roughly $2.8bn. So whilst certainly insane it's a far cry from bankrupting the world GDP :) However, observe the footnote about only stuff registered with the copyright office being eligible - I'm not sure if these would have been.
I wonder if the discovery process will include all those who caved in to Getty's extortion tactics and coughed up the dosh?
Nitpick though: I don't think she released these to the public domain, IANAL but I think there's a significant difference between that and bequeathing to the public (if that's the right terminology?) via the LoC. That said, if they were public domain, pretending to own the license of them would quite probably constitute fraud.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 3, Informative) by MrNemesis on Friday July 29 2016, @01:15PM
Replying to myself, but found a report which makes it a bit clearer:
http://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2016/07/photographer-seeking-1-billion-getty-images-copyright-infringement.html [pdnonline.com]
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @01:25PM
The number is $400 million. The 1 billion comes from them being a repeat offender. The woman retains copyright on her works and has allowed them to be used in the public domain. This may be a case where the numbers are not outrageous. Just another example of how copyright as written is broken and in need of restoration.