Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
From reading the article, it sounds like a straightforward copyright violation to me. People are selling digital copies of commercial photographs without permission. If it was my work being re-sold, I'd be suing, too!
I doubt that the DMCA is even relevant to the case, which could probably be prosecuted without it.
The Bill Gates connection is also spurious. Any copyright owner would be doing this.
Is there even a story here?
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.
"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.
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.