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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."
Here's a link to news.com. Give Google news a shot, the piece is being carried by just about everyone.
that Corbis got permission from the Wall Street Journal to scan and redistribute it's copy as a pdf?
> Amazon will use the DMCA to defend itself.
Why does this give me a mental picture of a giant, half-naked female warrior beating off hordes of bad guys, armed only with a rolled up piece of paper?
Gotta get out more...
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.
Looks like the DMCA is a swiss army knife...
Only thing better would be if the news paper had an image of a computer screen with browser viewing the pictures in it...
uhh wait a min...
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?
Amazon is obviously innocent. While Corbis claims that they are a "professional stock photo agency", that's clearly not possible: no company that puts out a crappy scan of a copyrighted story in the WSJ as a "press release" could possibly either know anything about copyrights or digital imaging. They must be some sort of impostors. Whereever those Meg Ryan photos came from, they can't have come from Corbis.
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.
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.
It's like putting Hilary Rosen and Ann Coultier into a spiked cage and fretting over who won't emerge.
I guess we all win this time.
Corbis attacks with IP violation suit.
Amazon strikes with DCMA +0.
Corbis resists !
Amazon conjures rapid laywers.
Corbis conjures Bill Gates.
Amazon conjures David Boies.
Bill Gates attacks with incompatible IE +6.
David Boies strikes with countersuit.
Countersuit misfires !
Judge drops dead laughing !
Bill Gates integrates IE into Windows.
Corbis conjures more laywers.
Amazon casts press release at Bill Gates.
Bill Gates resists !
David Boies casts Chebacca defense.
Chebacca defense misfires !
Amazon loses !Judge orders Amazon to pay 10000000 $ !
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.
So while they have a case against the person selling the photos I don't think they have one against Amazon itself (unless it was made aware of the fact and failed to take action - which is not the case).
This case is akin to charging a newspaper with theft because someone advertised something that turned out to be stolen in the trading post section or pimping because of the classified section.
The only reason Amazon is the target is because it has more money.
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.
The DMCA has to do with Amazon trying to be considered a service provider so that they can have immunity.
I think it is very relavent how that distinction is drawn personaly.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It sounds more like an RPG... or perhaps pokémon.
Corbismon I choose you! use your Copyright Violation weapon!
Oh no!
Amazonchu is countering with their DMCA beam!
gaaaaah
If Corbis didn't get the WSJ's permission, they would almost definitely be infringing. Section 107 is the general statutory fair use provision, your choice of statute is correct. But they copied the entire article -- big no-no for fair use -- and they're doing it for purposes arguably much more commercial than noncommercial (the fact that this article is in a very recent issue of the WSJ doesn't help in this regard, and of course neither does its appearance on Corbis's corporate website). Those two things together are probably deadly, at least with non-digital stuff. The seminal case I'm thinking of -- American Geophysical Union v. Texaco -- involved photocopying complete journal articles for distribution among the scientists at Texaco, and Texaco lost. Corbis's PDF wouldn't be much different.
This minimal bitrate fair use idea is interesting, though. I've never heard of this argument winning. Do you have any cites? At any rate, the quality of the PDF isn't very important. In the past, direct reproduction of copyrighted material wasn't very good by nature, but unauthorized copies were still infringing. It shouldn't really be different now, at least for texts. I can definitely think of fairuse arguments for minimal bitrate MP3s, but I'm not so sure they'd win (which is why I'd love to read an opinion that thought otherwise).
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.
"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.
You are guilty of infringement when you, yourself, reproduce, distribute or make derivative works without consent, unless certain defenses apply (fair use, first sale, more money than the plaintiff to defend yourself, etc.).
You may also be guilty of infringement if you contribute to another person's infringement (think "aiding and abetting"), or if you have a master-agent relationship with the infringer. However, you are not responsible under these rules all the time. As a threshold matter, you are never responsible unless the primary individual is actually guilty of an infringement (that is, you can assert all of his defenses). Also, both for contribution and vicarious infringement, you generally have to have a guilty state of mind, often requiring, at least, imputed knowledge of the direct infringement. For contribution, there is also a number of other rules, such as the modern version of the Supreme Court's Sony "substantial noninfringing use" test, whereby you are off the hook if the technology is capable of a substantial noninfringing use, except in cases where the defendant's corporate name ends in "ster."
When the Church of Scientology sued Netcom for contributing to the infringements of its customers, Netcom prevailed, as I recall on summary judgment, by pointing out that it had no reason to know of the infringement, and thus could not be liable for contribution. This District Court opinion was later codified in the DMCA "internet provider" safe harbor rules. Note that whether or not the DMCA gives Amazon a defense, Amazon can always fall back on general rules of contribution, including Netcom.
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.