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I believe the submission is asking, not from a legal perspective (which won't be decided here in any case), but from an ethical one. It does seem to me that the photographer is trying to take advantage of the situation. If he accepted payment of X for 2 years of use, accepting the same or less (no more work involved) for an addition 2 years seems appropriate. OTOH, if the photo is so good that it the customer wants to continue using it, perhaps they should pay more. But my suspicion is that, if he wanted more, they'd be perfectly happy to have someone else take a new photo, and probably a "work for hire" so they could use in perpetuity. Long story short, they owe him something which is closer to the original payment than to the extortionist amount he seeks. Individual against corporation shouldn't matter, sentiment around /. seems to be against extortion when it's corporation against individual. This isn't any different, other than the parties being reversed. So, is the answer based on ethics/principles, or on "screw the big guy?"

Did anybody actually read the original article (link to non-mobile version with images) in Der Standard? First, the photographer does not want 2 million from the hotel chain. The total estimated value of the copyright violation, including third parties, is 2 million. The current offer to settle is 1 million (plus legal fees, which are relatively reasonable in Austria) from Hovarth, and the hotel has already upped its offer to 400000. At stake is not simply that the hotel has used the photos for the intended purpose for longer than licensed, but rather that they have given out the high-resolution originals (claiming they own the copyright) to third parties for promotion - leading to one or the other of the photos to end up on 170 magazine covers and in newspapers like the New York Times, El Pais, and the The Telegraph.

It was an inside job, their first announcement was, that it was a suspected hack, and that they sent their collected data so far to a cyber incidence response center, and later determined it must have been an inside job. This is the (german) article from a leading Austrian newspaper about the incident from yesterday morning: FACC article. Feel free to use your favorite online translation service if your german is not good enough.

I'd suggest reading the interview with Jon McCann, who heads up GNOME3 development and who brought us the "user configuration is bad, because the user will do evil things" gnome-screensaver. Note particularly the following:

"And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different."

Austrian regulations for drivers license pictures state that they have to have a specified size and that the whole head has to be visible. There is no constraint that you cannot wear something on your head! Austrian police released a statement, that they do not care about that and granted it because it is within normal specifications. Also, there was no "three year battle" at all. The guy applied for a license(Note: he specified that he did not want to be notified(!)) and the license was granted. End of story. Since the guy had specified that he wanted to take care himself and check for completion of the request himself(!), the license was simply waiting for him for more than two years. http://derstandard.at/1310511140592/Fuehrerschein-Nudelsieb-doch-nicht-aus-religioesen-Gruenden-genehmigt

I wish this would have been made more clear. This story is reported all over the world as "Mozilla doesn't care about companies" (paraphrased). I had a two-hour meeting today with the CTO at one of my customers, to discuss alternatives to Firefox after this bombshell hit. NB, we're _not_ a Microsoft shop, we run Linux on about 80% of the workstations (yes, really) and 100% of the servers. This is a company with about 60 employees. The result was, let's wait and see for a couple of months, but if this goes on, consider switching to Opera.

I love Firefox to bits. For me, personally, it's like a huge toolbox with endless possibilities. I was one of the first to install the early pre-release, and I stuck with it since then. But if they insist on this bizarre release schedule, I can't with a clear conscience recommend it for my customers any longer.

There is a very good reason why we don't increment major product version numbers for fun - this number is an indicator for addon and plugin developers that the necessary APIs haven't changed too much. Security fixes? Fine, increment the patch number 1.2.NNN. New features that won't conflict with existing software? Increment the minor number 1.NNN.2. API-breaking changes? Increment the major version number NNN.1.2. What they're doing now is leading to widespread confusion and unnecessary incompatibility warnings.

You work at Mozilla. I implore you, please use your position to tell the powers that be that the loyal FF users are getting very nervous, and rightly so. If this was really only the opinion of one man, the Mozilla Foundation should issue a press release to that effect. Because, as of now, what everybody heard was "Mozilla doesn't care about companies" and a matching "Microsoft does" from a MS spokesman.

CJ

PS, in case you don't believe how this has been reported, this is the article which caused today's emergency meeting. It's in German, but you'll get the drift. The translated headline is "Mozilla: IE9 better suited for companies than Firefox". This is from one of the most respected newspapers in our region.

The summary links to a blog post, which links to an article in the Croatian Times (which, by the way, doesn't give me the impression of being a serious news source).
I did a bit of digging and found an article (in German, but basically the same story, with a little bit more detail and more than a hint of cynicism toward the whole idea) from Der Standard (one of Austria's best newspapers).
Dated: November 2007.

Two and a half years old? C'mon, guys, you can do better than this!

(Disclaimer: Austrian living abroad.)

That seems correct to me.

Mark Shuttleworth has been wonderful for Linux, but he has not shown the kind of intense leadership necessary to get the job done. You can see that even in the interview. Somehow he has allowed an interview to be published that has numerous grammatical and typing mistakes.

Also, the interview doesn't provide the expected information that would give an impression of sufficient leadership. Quote: "We delivered a couple of interesting things in Ubuntu 9.04, some of them are controversial, like the notification piece and the messaging menu. But I think in principle it's going well."

Notice also the poor use of language. "Couple" means two and doesn't fit with "some".

From the inside, participating in KDE, GNOME, and X.org may seem like a lot of fascinating fun to developers and technology enthusiasts. Frankly, from the outside Linux desktop development seems like it's moving very slowly. Linux has been a 6-step process for a lot of people: 1) Want to install Linux. 2) Get involved in a lot of time-consuming, self- and other-defeating debate over KDE and GNOME. 3) Make a choice. 4) Install Linux and discover that you can't set the proper resolution for your monitor. 5) Spend a lot of time learning the reasons why. 6) Decide to wait until the Linux desktop is more mature.

Years of that has been very bad publicity for Linux as a desktop OS.

In my opinion, finding some way to work around the present Linux desktop self-defeat is in the best interest of Google.

Bullshit.

He said "I think it would be perfectly possible to deliver the values of GNOME on top of Qt". You really need new glasses if you read that as "GNOME should move to QT"...

http://derstandard.at/?id=3413801

[sorry for replying out of context, but I'd like this to be as visible as possible]

Austria's chancellor Werner Faymann has just overruled the science minister's decision:

AUSTRIA WILL NOT LEAVE CERN.

It took us a while to impress on our government how much damage pulling out of CERN would do to the scientific research in Austria, as well as the country's international reputation. The petition (German version) has gathered over 30k supporters in just a few days, which (I hope) has had some effect.

Finally, here's a link to the online version of the "Standard" newspaper with the announcement:
http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1242316123780

I'll try to translate in a follow-up.

CJ

http://euro-police.noblogs.org/post/2009/02/08/bislang-geheime-datenbank-erfasst-in-gro-britannien-alle-ein-und-ausreisen

http://derstandard.at/PDA/?id=1233586959776

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bislang-geheime-Datenbank-erfasst-in-Grossbritannien-alle-Ein-und-Ausreisen--/meldung/127093

http://derstandard.at/Text/?id=1216918402134

Or do you think that those commercials are an accurate display of the Mac vs. PC world?
If you do than you've been fooled by one of the great showmen of our times.

Accurate? I give up... you mean the guy in drag in PCs home video isn't really a blond???

Heck, I think those ads are more fun than most of what's on television..

Maybe I just have a strange sense of humor?
Even XP has made me laugh: "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue" MS has its own kind of innovation I guess.

But ya know it doesn't really matter what we think, it is the people who DO relate to "PC" that are the ones replacing PCs with Macs... They're who those ads are created for. Much of the total market or not, those are about half of the people buying Macs.

But maybe you'd give more credence to serious statements from people like from Mark Shuttleworth (Mr Ubuntu!).

A submission here the other day for a Mark Shuttleworth interview was presented as relating to the Linux desktop, the linked page title line is Shuttleworth: "Apple is driving the innovation"

OS X related clip (from page 2 of 3) of interview with Mark Shuttleworth (the Ubuntu guy!):

derStandard.at: If you look on the desktop market today there is one operating system that is growing significantly and it's not Linux. It's OS X. What do you think is the reason for that?

Shuttleworth: First of all, we should really understand this, as it's an important observation: The fact that OS X is growing, tells us that Windows is weakening. The fact that OS X is growing and Linux isn't, tells you that OS X is offering things that Linux is not. One of those is the pace of change, the level of innovation. You really have to give credit to Apple for driving innovation. Another of those things is their focus on the web as an experience. They recognize very strongly that the web is the killer application of the PC today and not Microsoft today.

There is a real opportunity for us to deliver a great web experience, but we have to focus very strongly on getting this done.

derStandard.at: So OS X is more interesting for you than Windows?

Shuttleworth: For me OS X is more interesting. I believe that free software is the most amazing platform for innovation, but I believe that that innovation also tends to follow a "lazy path", people often choose the path of least resistance, they want to express their ideas and they want to find the easiest way to do that. And at the moment we don't offer a particular easy place to go and express your technology.

--
I hate to post this as AC, but the corporate shills be dangerous when they get mod points!

This guy looks like he couldn't reproduce unless test tubes were involved. Then there is this guy. Wolf!!! Then, look at these studmuffins here. Which one do you want has your wingman? I am not saying sex is impossible with any of these chaps (except maybe the second one) but it will take a lot of work. They have to put down the Linux sometime. In your case, Ubuntu is basically giving up on the whole hardcore linux crap for a social life. Just ask this playa.

The faces of Microsoft aren't much to look at. But hey, they are rich and can buy all the tail they need!

If this guy can sell these. He shouldn't have any trouble smooth talking a lady. This guy doesn't seem to have a problem. I say Mac users are a happy bunch.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the BSD folks. Their OS is "infirmed" but they got heart. Just look at their mascot. These guys are classy.

Better link yet, with white backgrand *and* the guy's pic :) :http://derstandard.at/druck/?id=2845484

http://derstandard.at/Text/?id=2845484

> (And no, FasterFox doesn't make FF render pages at the speeds of IE or Opera)

If your renderer is spaghetti-code and you leave out the clean structure and error-checking then it's no problem to get faster than firefox.

So i would not really call IE a "renderer"... it's only half of the work... done bad.

By the way. Try loading one of those huge pages like http://derstandard.at/ and measure the time in IE and FF. On my pc FF is faster WITH all the extensions...
So maybe your pc is just buggy...?

Exactly.
Last time i looked at http://derstandard.at/ it hat over 500kb. Now the question is why they call themselves the standard? The standard in what? In new forms of bloating perversity? ;)

Here you go. That's the article about it in our local paper. It's where I read about it first.

The Austrian Newspaper Der Standard has a mirror too. They also have pictures of a (flat screen) iMac.

The Austrian Newspaper Der Standard has a mirror too. They also have pictures of a (flat screen) iMac.

The Austrian Newspaper Der Standard has a mirror too. They also have pictures of a (flat screen) iMac.

... the news made it into the online version of the Austrian daily newspaper "Der Standard", which is one of the most popular web sites in Austria (2nd at the moment, I think). The headline was "Top-Programmer leaves Red Hat". :-) It concludes that the "commercialization" of Linux would cause more reactions like this among open source programmers... (look here). I don't think it's bad to have an exact Windows clone personality for Linux, if it's also more flexible than Windows. There'll always be room for creativity, since everyone's free to change/improve whatever desktop/window manager/variation of Linux they begin with.