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Corbis Sues Amazon for Copyright Infringement

Posted by timothy on from the once-is-understandable dept.

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."

13 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. FYI by mrpuffypants · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Note that this is in regard to Amazon Marketplace sellers. It's not Amazon that's actually selling the worthless pictures of celebrities.
    I'd say that this sounds like a Kazaa-type situation. Don't shoot the messenger I guess.

  2. what's the eBay distinction by I+Want+GNU! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This article is very murky on details...

    Does anyone have any idea how the Amazon marketplace system is set up and what causes them to say that "the way Amazon is organized may change the analysis from the eBay analysis...the more directly they're involved, the more they may seem like a traditional infringer" ?

  3. Playing mummy to irresponsible traders by aligma · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is a recurring issue of people abusing services provided to them. When people share copyrighted files on P2P networks, are the P2P networks responsible?

    It seems now that there is an increasing trend toward making people responsible for their own actions (read: copyright violations), and in the current climate, Amazon may well win, although it doesn't look too pretty for the merchants.

  4. Fair use possibilities by yerricde · · Score: 2, Interesting

    By the "amount and substantiality" doctrine and the "effect on the market" doctrine (see 17 USC 107 for details), distributing a minimal-bitrate MP3 file may count as fair use in some cases. For many of the purposes that minimal-bitrate MP3 files are put to, the "purpose and character" doctrine may apply as well.

    Nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  5. Corbis is Crap by fm6 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm a Fred Astaire fan. A couple years ago, I decided I wanted a picture of him on my office wall. None of the pics or poster I could find suited. Then I discovered that various press companies were selling copies of their photos online. Found the one (can't remember which one) that owned the rights to Fred's image. Paid a small fee, agreed not to use the image commercially. Downloaded it, printed it out, stuck it up. Cool.

    Now that same image belongs to Corbis. It's on their web site, but before they quote a price on an image, they make you specify what you're going to do with it. All their uses seem to be commericial. The closest I could come to my needs was to specify that I intended to put it up in the lobby of my business.

    And after I go through all this, I'm told that online pricing for this image isn't available! Lame.

    I try it again with an image of a person that doesn't have a greedy estate. I end up with a photo of this statue. A download will cost me $1700!

    This is IP hoarding of the worst kind.

    1. Re:Corbis is Crap by aethelferth · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The May, 2001 editorial in American Heritage magazine confirmed my fears that, as bad as Microsoft's bundling of software may be, that infamous Harvard drop-out's use of their desktop operating system monopoly to gain control over content is a far bigger threat. They can restrict content so that it can only be used from their platform by only licensing it for use in their propietary formats. They can prohibit further reproduction of historic journalistic content for their own political ends and for the political ends of the party they choose to support. Perhaps famous photographs of the poverty of the Great Depression will disappear from textbooks, since they might elicit sympathy for a Democratic agenda. Perhaps any encyclopedia competing with Encarta will have to settle for 2nd-rate photographs. Perhaps photographs of Pres. Bush I barfing at a state dinner may never be reprinted again. What Microsoft has done to the software world infuriates me as a software engineer; what Bill Gates is doing to the publishing world and the press infuriates me as a citizen.

  6. Re:Microsoft is above the law. by garyok · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ooh! I found more details! Apparently, after this, Microsoft paid STAC $43M for the patent infringement, bought $40M of their stock and cross-licensed each other patents. STAC took the deal rather than fight appeals for years and years.

    --
    One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
  7. Why not negotiation? by panurge · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The average professional photographer doesn't make a huge amount of money. 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. In a more rational commercial environment, Corbis could simply have sent Amazon a bill. If Amazon refused to pay, then legal action would start. And Amazon would have the option of paying, then passing the bill back to the people posting copyright material on its site.

    Back in the days before lawyers decided that the Constitution guaranteed them a percentage of everything, a part share in a couple of hotels and a condo, and a different colored SUV for every day of the week, good lawyers could write a letter that would start the process of negotiation without egos getting inflamed and everything ending up in court. It's better for business that way. But now CEOs are terrified of not being seen to do everything possible to extract every last cent and inflate the share price, and I suspect law firms milk this. Eventually the tide of opinion will turn, perhaps when those same CEOs decide to blame the tide of lawsuits for current underperformance and start to lobby government to fix the problem. Cynical? Yes. Realistic? Maybe

    --
    Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
  8. Evil vs. Evil by Holger+Spielmann · · Score: 2, Interesting
    It's always nice to see two evil forces fighting each other. Only sad thing is that this will again put money into the pockets of some greedy lawyers. But anyway, let's fetch some beer and popcorn.

    ObJoke:
    Q: What are 20,000 lawyers on the bottom of the Northern Sea?
    A: A good start.

  9. Re:Willfull commision by afidel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hate to respond to myself but I decided to do some reading, and Amazon may potentially have a problem with 17USC512(C)(1)(B)
    "does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and"

    but Corbis is really going to be slapped around by the judge for not following ANY of the procedures set forth for copyright holders under 17USC512. Basically they didn't try to use any of the methods at their disposal to stop the infringing activity but instead ran directly to court, judges generally frown upon this as it ties up the courts with what is usually needless actions (or else the remedies wouldn't be in the code).

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  10. The DMCA is a good law by sakusha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I just used the DMCA to get back control of my personal website from the ISP that was holding it hostage. Without the DMCA, I would have had to fight in district courts over copyrights, it would have taken me months and many bucks spent on shyster lawyers. But a single DMCA affadavit and bam, my personal work is back under my control.

    1. Re:The DMCA is a good law by Sexy+Commando · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Care to explain how DMCA was used in your case?

  11. Re:The DMCA is a VERY good law by sakusha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My former web services provider locked me out of my website due to a business dispute over their refusal to repair (or even acknowledge) bugs in their proprietary front-end. After the lockout, they maliciously kept the site up, hoping to spread confusion amongst web searchers about where my current site is located. Web searches were diverted from my lowly independent site to the same content on their highly-rated site, diverting my audience to the old dead site. I had a backup of the site, so I only sought to have the old site deleted. The provider had repeatedly agreed to remove the site but they never did, they were lying to me. I could easily have hacked into the site and deleted it myself, but that would have been illegal.
    Fortunately I posted copyright notices on each page I wrote before I lost control of the site. I filed a DMCA complaint with the upstream provider, demanding removal of my copyrighted content or else they must disconnect the server from the net. I just followed the instructions on the www.chillingeffects.org site (which ironically is an anti-DMCA site with the best information on how to use the law). I just whipped together a nice PDF copied from a successful DMCA complaint by Dow Chemical. The upstream ISP was in the process of pulling the plug on the web provider's primary server when the assholes at the provider finally realized they better relinquish control of my site, and they caved in and deleted the site. Victory for the little guy!
    To respond to a separate reply to my message, you're bringing up a strawman to mention Elcomsoft. All you've proven is that there are bad lawmen, not that the DMCA is a bad law. Elcomsoft is a spamware seller and they all belong in a Gulag at hard labor, not Club Fed.