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Corbis Sues Amazon for Copyright Infringement
Gedvondur writes "The story ran in the WSJ today, that the Gates-owned image company, Corbis, is suing Amazon.com for copyright violations (PDF link). Apparently the suit was without warning to Amazon. Amazon will use the DMCA to defend itself. Link goes to copy of the WSJ article on Corbis's site."
Will this court case implode creating a black hole which sucks down all the braindead IP laws this country has created?
Photos.
Looks like the DMCA is a swiss army knife...
But the news.com article says that "Corbis also accused the retailers of removing copy protection from the images in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
This could be an interesting test of the DMCA. It has stood up a lot but how well can it stand up against itself? Could the DMCA win again or could it finally fall down? One of them must lose, so will it be the DMCA, or instead could it be the DMCA? It really makes you think...
To play the devil's advocate (since many believe Microsoft is the devil), of course they don't like when people steal their IP, and of course they would sue. Would you not do the same?
And what IP do they steal? If they flat out steal IP would they not end up in court? I'm curious for specific examples of what you're talking about, not just generic "they're a buncha thieves" statements. I know that early on in their days they took discarded ideas from other companies and I know that many companies will copy the innovators and rebrand the ideas as their own, but what non-innovative corporations wouldn't copy the innovators if they don't get sued about it? And if it's a serious violation you're speaking of then wouldn't Microsoft get sued?
What ever happened to exercising some civility and making the assumption that people and corporations do make honest mistakes and will typically try to fix the situation when such a mistake is pointed out.
I fully believe that Corbis should be able to defend it's copyrights in courts if necessary. However, from the article it seems that Amazon and it's affiliated partners would have fully cooperated with removing the infringing material if they were simply informed of the issue. Furthermore, I would like to think that some reasonable settlement could have been reached short of filing a lawsuit had the infringing companies actually made any money off the images in question.
However, this seems like the case of another company thinking it won the judicial lottery because they found a clear cut instance copyright infringement. From the way lawsuits are flying out of Corbis you would think the Earth came to a crashing halt because some dumb picture of Renee Holhoegger found it's way onto Amazon.
Am I being naive that such a mistake can be made and remedied with people acting like adults, or do the people running Corbis need to go back to nursery school to learn to play nice with other kids? Sheesh.
Amazon's defense seems to be based on one of the few not-so-evil provisions in the DMCA: that ISPs cannot be blamed for the actions of their users ("common carrier" status). This will all hinge on whether or not Amazon's third-party listings are more like a service provider or a publisher.
IANAL, but this will be interesting.
Isn't part of the requirements of breaking copyright law (which is a civil tort in most cases) willfull violation?? How could Amazon be breaking copyright law if they did not know that the images were copyrighted? Is a bookstore liabel if they obtain pirated copies of a book through a legitimate reseller with no knowledge or reasonable expectation that the copies are not genuine articles? Otherwise there is a hell of a hole in the law where you are liabel for up to $150K per work for doing nothing wrong other than failing to do an exhaustive search for any copyright holders.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I would be cheering for Hilary to come out.
I can stand/understand being bitched out for not actually paying for half the music on my computer, but to be told that I am destroying the country for supporting gay rights or socialistic health care is insane.
forget it.
"We are of course willing to discuss options to resolve this with Amazon," Mitchell said. "Our goal is to put a stop to this activity. There's a component of this that requires our photographers to be compensated and to put steps in place to prevent this from happening again."
If they get $150,000 for each infrginement - how much of that do you think will go back to the original photographer? Right $0.00.
Companies like this have a right to protect their IP, but it's insulting to make it seem like they're doing it for some altruistic reason.
And there's me thinking patents (and the patent system itself) are bad.
On Slashdot, they're only bad when used against any company except Microsoft.
I keep reading on Slashdot things like: Copyright and patent infringement are civil matters, not theft, the patent system is broken anyway, etc
But whenever Stacker is mentioned (and it does seem to be a very popular stick to beat MS's record with), patent infringement apparently is thought to be theft, and the patent system ain't so bad after all.
Oh come on, while I don't know the specifics of the Stac vs MS case... I still think, as a general opinion: Patenting sofware = Bad always, no matter who is the target.
Acrobloat 6 has infested my computer and helpfully offered to export the JPEG inside the PDF. But I figure if you can't view PDFs you should just unplug the computer and get into model trains or something.
Pardon my insensitivity, but whooptie friggin doo. A man was put into JAIL for months under the name of the DMCA, and was later released without being charged. That is like saying the Patriot Act is a good law because they may have caught someone who could possibly have been a suspected terrorist, while there are hundreds of people being held in outdoor cells in Guantanamo with no trial or legal representation. Gee, slavery wasn't that bad, because some people made some money on it, and black people might not even be in this great land without it.
Hey, I am all for the little guy using the DMCA if it helps him out, but there is absolutely no reason for you to say it is a good law because of that. Say that it helped you, so it can aid the little guy too, but DON'T say it is a good law.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
>>It seems reasonable that if someone's work has been ripped off, they should be paid an amount equal to the usual fee rate for the actual usage, plus the costs of enforcement.
Actually, that's not reasonable. If the only penalty for infringement was that, then there would be NO incentive to not rip off images. A publisher could use dozens of images, and if he's only nailed for 2 or 3, he's still happy since he has still spent far less than if he paid the normal fee for all of them.
Now, with the $150,000 per infringement punative damages, he has lots of incentive to be honest.
Let me see if I get this right. You don't own your own face, because somebody can make a copy of it with a camera and sell copies of the copy without your permission. However, that person owns that copy of your face and can sue anybody else for selling copies of their copy, and you don't get a nickel out of it.
Yeah okay, makes sense to me.