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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: 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.