Slashdot Mirror
Geek Wins Copyright Lawsuit Against Corporation
Chris Gregerson writes "I work as a stock photographer/web developer. I saw a photo of mine used in Vilana Financial's full-page phone book ad. They wouldn't pay the licensing fee, and I wrote about it online (mirror). They sued me for defamation, producing a sales agreement signed by one ' Michael Zubitskiy' (who they said took the photo and sold the rights to them). I sued them for copyright infringement, and they added claims against me for trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices, and tortuous interference. There was a trial I'll long remember on the 5th of November, and the judge recently issued her verdict (PDF; mirror). She ruled Vilana Financial forged the sales agreement and willfully infringed my photos, and awarded me $19,462. All claims against me were denied. I represented myself during the litigation."
Justice was served, and you got the shysters to pony up 11 times what they would have paid if they'd just purchased the photos in the first place.
People like to dis the "IANAL" posters here, but I have found that a little bit of amateur legal knowledge, even stuff picked up from Judge Judy and the intarweb, can take you a long way in life. At a minimum you should know the basics of how contracts are enforced, what kind of evidence is acceptable in court, and how not to piss of a judge. Common sense will get you most of the way, but you need to know just a bit about the lingo and the process.
Finally a little man stood up to a corporation and won! And on Guy Fox day nonetheless. I'm just wondering where all the money for attorneys came from.
The game.
The old saying goes: "A man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client."
You are a shining example of the fact that there is an exception to every rule. Good job!!!
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
umm, what a great big surprise. Anyone would think the copyright system was designed to grossly bias the copyright owner or something.
How we know is more important than what we know.
and you sued them? Interesting the first few posts are of support, wonder what the reponse would be if this story was about the RIAA.
This seems like a pretty boring and routine infringement case. I'm glad the photographer won his case but why is it on slashdot?
Also it strikes me as a mistake not to hire an attorney in a case like this. Almost certainly you could recover attorney's fees and it just seems silly to risk getting blindsided by some legal rule you didn't know about. The courts do give pro se litigants extra room but why take the risk?
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
(a) It's not necessarily okay. Slashdot is a discussion site. Things are discussed here.
(b) Note all imaginary property monopolies are equal. Patents are far more evil than copyrights are far more evil than trademarks. The term "IP" is designed to conflate them and make nuanced debate difficult. Even parodies of the term, it seems, may have that effect.
(c) There is a difference between plagiarism and restriction on redistribution. In the complete absence of laws restricting redistribution (COPY rights), plagiarism could still be illegal/fraudulent. i.e. I could be permitted to go "here's a copy of the image LWATCDR's took. He sure is a talented photographer", but you could sue if I went "here's a copy of a cool image I took, I'm such a cool photographer", and I was trying to pass off your work as my own. Artists are generally concerned about plagiarism. Distributors care about distribution monopolies. If distribution monopolies exist, it's certainly fairer that the artist hold them (modern copyright law) rather than the distributor (old english common law design to keep the king's cronies powerful) - but that doesn't say whether distribution monopolies should exist at all. I say they shouldn't, but simultaneously say the penalties for plagiarism should be strengthened (they're particularly weak in the USA, ironically enough).
Intellectual property is just as imaginary as physical property. In both cases the government stops me from coming onto your property and shoving you off. In a purely natural world, I'd have the right to come in, shoot you, and suddenly have a nice plot of land.
However we WILLINGLY give up that right up to the government for the furthurence of society. Just like we WILLINGLY give up the right to be able to copy other people's ideas.
Some of us in fact DO agree with IP.
Apples to oranges, really ... this guy had incontrovertible evidence that his rights had been stepped upon, the court agreed with him. The RIAA operates to a much lower standard, both in terms of the "evidence" they present, and their reprehensible courtroom behavior. If this guy had manufactured some evidence out of thin air and used it to sue someone at random, I'd say you'd be closer to the mark.
Keep in mind also, that the creeps who ripped him off used his work to make a substantial sum of money. Indeed, they pretty much pirated his work in the legal sense of the term (this wasn't for personal use, it was for profit.) If the RIAA were suing someone that took a copyrighted work, put their name on it and sold it as their own, I don't think many people here would complain.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why is it okay for a geek to sue for this?
I mean data wants to be free and that picture is just data.
1) It is called "intellectual property", and this case sounds to me very much like how it is meant to work. This guy is making photographs for a living, and people should not use it without his consent. The damages also sound quite reasonable to me. Note that a photograph for use in your own publication normally costs much more than an audio recording in a retail shop, which you (and everyone around here) will probably want to compare it against.
2) It is OK for a anyone to sue for it. It is imho in principle even OK for an RIAA or MPAA to sue - as long as they follow the proper legal procedures, which they don't, and the damages demanded are reasonable, which they are not. This guy got like 10, 20 times the original price of the photo. That is a reasonable outcome I think. A price of USD1000-2000 for a photo with reproduction license is quite normal.
3) The expression is "information wants to be free", and this photo may be data, it is not information.
Wouter.
The defendants tried a counterclaim for defamation. The court commented:
...
Similarly, the statement that Defendants were suspected of fraud and forgery was a true statement of fact reflecting Plaintiff's belief that Defendants fabricated Zubitskiy and forged his signature on the 3/19/04 Agreement, which was also fraudulently notarized. Accordingly, Plaintiff did not engage in deceptive trade practices in violation of Minn. Stat. 325D.44,
Defendants' counterclaims against Plaintiff are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.
Reading the decision, it's clear what the judge thought of the defendants. They tried forging a notarized document. They couldn't produce the person whom they claimed took the picture. From then on, it was all downhill for the defendants.
I'm not a lawyer. I know when to use one.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
So ripping off a stock photo is Bad and this guy did good by pushing for his rights and winning.
But pirating copyright music via p2p etc is OK because nobody got hurt right.
ENOCOMPUTE
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The Slashdot community has this amusing mix of copyright haters and copyright lovers. See, we're supposed to be all geeks, so if someone takes (pardon me, "duplicates") our stuff, it's not longer "copyright is not theft!" but rather "get a goddamn rope!"
C//
In this case, it's the profit involved. I would be upset and feel that someone who charged $50 for an unauthorized copy of Vista should be sued in a similar fashion.
Also, note that this damage award is fairly reasonable. $18,000 is a hefty price for a small-mid sized business, but not a 'this will destroy your business' damage award. Unlike the $100,000+ award given to RIAA over that woman in Duluth when real damages could likely be truthfully estimated in dollars or 10s of dollars and statutory damages of 100s of dollars would be reasonable (if the concept of suing a non-commercial distributor who derives no benefit from the distribution is reasonable at all).
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Nevertheless, if the story were in essence reversed and it was about a faceless company suing an unrepresented guy and getting a hefty award of damages for some relatively minor IP infringement, we'd get a bunch of bearded geek hippies rambling on about how "information wants to be free" and "I don't believe in imaginary property" and so on.
Do you seriously think that if a geek used a company's photo without a license & when caught, fraudulently filed suit for defamation, following it up with trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices, and tortuous interference, that geek hippies would equate this with information wanting to be free?
Seriously? Or perhaps you were just wanting to have a pathetic little dig at your perception of slashdot groupthink.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Patents are far more evil than copyrights
Patents are for a fixed 20-year term, and must be laid out in specificity for the good of the general public upon expiration. Patents are subject to a lengthy examination process to prove that they are novel and non-trivial extensions of the current knowledge.
By contrast, copyright is for the life of the author plus (currently) 70 years. Thanks to our Congress, everything created since 1923 could potentially still be protected. After 80 years of Mickey Mouse, he is STILL not in the public domain. Walt Disney croaked in 1966, and his copyright will last until at least 2024. See this article for more details.
Trademarks are designed to protect your interest in your "brand", and to prevent customer confusion. They are inherently a good thing.
I would posit that 1) trademarks are good for companies and the consumer; 2) patents are mostly a good system (with the possible exclusion of business method patents), and 3) that copyright is much more heinous.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The argument is that theft or stealing is "taking something, depriving the affected person of something"
Copyright infringement is "making a duplication"
There is a subtle, but important difference: if something is stolen from you, you don't have it, and the thief does. If something you made gets the copyright infringed upon, you still have your creation.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
From the web page of the /. hero of the hour:
Magistrate Judge Arthur J. Boylan ruled that Vilana cannot copy my computer hard drives and I don't have to produce email between myself and my attorney. However, I must turn over email with the terms "Vilana", "Vilenchik", "Zubitskiy", "Kazaryan", "Walker", etc. I sent Vilana's attorney a DVD with over 500 emails...they can sift through my private thoughts and feelings about their misconduct as described to my parents, sisters, and friends. Note: at trial in November, 2007, Vilana's attorney actually cross-examined me on these emails, which did not appear to prove anything except my own version of events.
Note to self: if ever thinking of getting involved in litigation, seed potential keywords into an email spam generating engine of some kind. "All emails with terms (keyword)? Certainly - here's 8G of text for you to read..."
Congratulations to Mr. Gregerson. Reading the timeline shows it was a long, hard battle that many would have given up on.
|>
Here be Dragons
Actually,if he is like most artists I know(and I have known quite a few) he probably wouldn't have any problem with someone taking a copy of his work to use as a screensaver,desktop wallpaper,or even making a single copy to hang on their wall. What he had a problem with was a company using his works for profit without paying him for its use. That is the difference between copyright infringement and piracy.One is simply making an unauthorized copy,while the other is making a profit off of someone else's work.I say good for him.But saying this is copyright infringement is misleading when it is actually piracy.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah, they deprived him of $19,462..
19 grand for a corporation that blatantly forged documents? Its a laughingly tiny fine for a corp. They basically got let off even though they committed what sounds like perjury in court. Its disgusting.
The ruling says that removing a "digital watermark" triggers some DMCA sanctions: the guy embedded a digital watermark saying the image was copyrighted by him, using a particular watermarking tool. The posted images lacked the watermark. The court ruled that this meant they "removed copyright control information". I'm all for punishing copyright infringers, but note that in general there is no way to tell if a watermark has been embedded in an image or not. So, this metes out extra punishment for copyright infringement based on the rights holder embedding an undetectable booby-trap in the copyrighted work. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.
Well, there are always people on Slashdot that call copyright infringement theft, and always people who say it isn't theft; it's not amusing that you've found one of the former category, it's to be expected.
This situation is a little bit different from file sharing as well--the entity which comitted the copyright infringement was engaged in commercial (for profit) distribution without permission or restitution, and when asked to rectify the situation, failed to comply and attempted to bludgeon submission out of the copyright holder with legal intimidation.
I guess around here you're more likely to find people saying "get a goddamn rope" when a multi-million dollar corporation shits on the little guy, and "copyright is not theft" when the little guy shits on a multi-million dollar corporation. There isn't a difference of type between the two, but there is a difference in degree. Also, the extent to which a corporation can shit on you vastly exceeds your ability to ruin their day.
I guess what I'm saying is, the sterotyped geek/Slashdot response isn't de facto hypocritical, there's actually a fairly solid rationale behind it. You're welcome to disagree with some of the premises, and even to discuss them, but to pretend that it's idiotic to support this copyright holder while simultaneously using TPB to copy music is really just attacking straw men.
Yes, that is exactly what happened. I learned other lessons, many of which I will probably not share outside my family or I will seem cynical. I believe the verdict was just in this case, and I'm not cynical.
www.cgstock.com
Seriously, if you actually believe there should be laws against "copying other people's ideas" then there is no hope for you.
And if you actually believe that copyright protects other people's ideas, then there isn't much hope for you, either. For a guy who seems to be responsible for about every other post in this discussion about copyright, you're pretty uninformed about what copyright is.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Whenever the RIAA screams about a geek committing copyright violation and calling it theft, we always go to great lengths to point out that copyright violation is not theft, and it is also not piracy. Those are different things. If they were the same, we wouldn't need a law about copyright violation on the books - it would already be covered.
And while I'm at it, how about if we use this case as an example to use against the RIAA the next time they say a single instance of copyright violation causes millions in damages? $19k sounds about right to me.
Come to think of it, it's too bad this guy couldn't pinch some RIAA lawyers to represent him. With the math they use, he'd be a millionaire.
"Well, we assume about $2000 for the single user licensing rights, and the magazine has a circulation of millions, therefore we seek damages to the tune of two billion dollars."
Dr. Evil pinky is optional at this point.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
C// Copyright infringement is not theft. This is a civil issue. That's why they are supposed to pay, not to go to jail.
In this particular case, copyright is working probably like it was meant to work. Seeing that this is the extreme minority of the copyright consequences, I still think copyright, as it is now, should not exist at all, because its benefits are eclipsed by its drawbacks.
These people should be forced to pay a reasonable amount of money to this guy.
"Seriously, if you actually believe there should be laws against "copying other people's ideas" then there is no hope for you."
Um, dude? Relax, step away from the keyboard, and let's take a trip to the clue store, shall we? I'm buying.
Nobody, not Lessig, not Stallman, not Linus himself, thinks that we need to abolish the laws against "copying other people's ideas". First of all, copyright cannot inhere in an idea, but only in an expression of an idea, so your comment isn't even relevant to the topic of copyright infringement. Ideas aren't copyrightable, but they are patentable, so let's talk about that, shall we?
If it's patent abolition that you're gunning for, let's keep in mind a few things: 1) research costs money. 2) Publication of research exposes it to copying by parties who haven't paid for the research. 3) Patents are a bargain struck between inventors and the general public, which restrain for a limited time the commercial use of patented inventions in return for the inventor sharing their research with the world. 4) The patent system, equitably administrated, demonstrably increases the amount of research and invention taking place by 5) allowing inventors to amortize the costs of research over the duration of the patent -- a condition from which we all benefit.
Now, there are good and persuasive arguments that the current patent system is inequitably administrated, for example that the scope and duration of patentable invention is overbroad, or even that there are whole areas of patent that don't suit the purposes of the law (e.g., software, business methods, and patents on genetic sequences found in nature.)
But nobody with the sense God gave a turnip, even on the side critical of strong IP, thinks that there shouldn't, in certain circumstances and under certain limitations, be laws against "copying other people's ideas."
I can recommend a few books, if you'd like.
Cheers,
(Anon. Coward because I forgot my password.)
First, good for OP. Making it through that situation without counsel is a nontrivial task.
As for the case, I think we can agree(regardless of our positions on intellectual property) that the chaps he was up against are complete scumbags. Riping off a photographer for your advertisements, throwing up a cloud of spurious charges against him when he calls foul, forging notarized documents and lying to a court about it is behavior indicative of a complete lack of ethical standard. It disturbs me that this fellow is, presumably still, active in financial and real-estate activities. I suspect that OP isn't the only guy who has been or will be ripped off.
I think we ought to consider doing what we can to make sure that Google displays a strong correlation between the name of the guilty company and this story for some time to come.
One school of thought is that if you hire a photographer to take photos of something that it's an instance of work for hire, which means that the copyright, and therefor the negatives, belong to you(as the person doing the hiring). In this instance you can take the negatives and get as many copies of them made in whatever fashion you like, and do anything you like with them, including sell them to a company for advertising purposes.
This is a relatively sensible view, and you'll find that when most photographers get other photographers to do work for them that this is the kind of deal they insist on getting.
The counter argument you get from photographers(and the idea which many of them base their business model around) is that because what they do is "art", that it cannot be work for hire, and therefor they own the copyright and the only way for you to get reproductions of the work is from them. They tend to charge a rather ridiculous fee for the reproductions(though usually a lower one for the actual photography), and the really sneaky ones won't charge you anything at all since then it's definitely not work for hire.
As a business model it doesn't really work anymore, because most people hold the idea that photographs they've paid someone to take of them and their kids should belong to them, and therefor have absolutely no problems copying them without the consent of the theoretical copy right holder. Add to that the idea of better scanners and it's pretty much a non viable startup which only works because most people are too cheap to pay up front for a photographer who is willing to price themsslves at a rate which makes work for hire profitable.
Regardless however this argument doesn't apply to the case in question as the plaintiff most definitely was not involved in work for hire as he didn't take the photograph at the defendent's request.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Certainly their litigation tactics are reprehensible at best and they've committed blunder after blunder (and there's no one who can really say they're not corrupt), but for the most part, the people they go after aren't people who shared an album, or downloaded a movie once. Their usual target is someone sharing thousands or tens of thousands of songs with quite a bit of traffic going in and out. Yeah, we hear a lot more about the little kids and grandmas who get sued, but they make for a better story than someone with 24,000 songs and tens of thousands of downloads.
It's pretty hard to say with a straight face that most of these defendants are innocently sharing a few songs with a few friends or that it doesn't have any commercial impact.
It may be hard to believe, but that distinction you personally make is also one made in legal circles. It's not generally worthwhile to "go after your customers" as it is said here, and they don't. They throw a few random ones in for whatever reason (probably just to keep people in line, like speeding enforcement), but that's the exception, not the rule. It's far more nuanced than lots of people here would ever admit, because it lessens their compelling tales. The opponents are just as greedy as the "big media" they despise. 'Fair' is somewhere in the middle, but everyone's life is more complicated because of the vocal, intolerant few who don't like the business model but somehow can't do without these things they claim have no value.
I filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Commerce, Market Enforcement Division, over this exact issue (my case no. is MO2603479). That was two years ago. I sent follow-up emails and left phone messages, and sent them this verdict recently. They have yet to reply, and unfortunately it appears they actually gave the other party in this suit a NEW mortgage originator's license under a new corporate name. I don't know what's going on over there.
www.cgstock.com
Most of the older (six digits or fewer) users of Slashdot are software people, and, as such, we make our reputation and most of us our living from copyrighted software. So we know exactly what copyright means. When you steal my bike, that's theft. When you copy my code against the terms of the license I grant you, that's copyright infringement. I'll come after you if you do either of them, but I know what the difference is.
Copyright infringement is not theft.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
If you ever read more than the headings of articles you'd know that /. has featured more than enough articles about this sort of thing. Slashdot doesn't 'hate copyright', it opposes copyright abuse, be it through patent stupidity or IP theft. It doesn't matter whether a piece of work is licensed at all: copyright still exists particularly for situations like this, and the right to assert copyright is the right to be protected from having your work used without attribution. The GPL isn't for photography: that's why Creative Commons exists, and CC does not preclude the right to attribution or indeed the right to make money out of intellectual property. Try and understand the issues before making yourself look stupid. It saves time.
"Looking good Vern."
People are always saying that you can buy a court victory. While it's true that you can try to intimidate someone into giving up, once you get to court your case had better have some substance or you will lose no matter how many lawyers you hire.
With a strong emphasis on "reasonable". Why was he awarded only about US$20k when RIAA asks for millions per song? Why didn't the FBI snoop on the publication (and all other publications) to cohibit the heinous offense of copyright infringement in printed media? All this make me sick. Corporations are allowed to rewrite the law, do away with far use, extend copyright and ask for immoral compensation - and yet they'd like all these laws were not applied when they are in the receiving end of the stick. In any case, I can see why some people may label this particular case as theft. Not only they used his work without his consent, but they also claimed it wasn't his, and that they in fact had the right to use instead of the original creator - via a fake document. So, I'd say in this case, they were stealing from him; had the judge sided with the other side he would be effectually unable to use his work anymore, and that might be equal to theft. But before all the "piracy is theft" crowd begin to cheer, I have never seen our mates at TPB claiming they own or produced any of the works their torrents lead to.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Art existed long before copyright did -- but was paid for by a sponsoring patron.
The patronage system worked pretty well in aristocratic rennaisance Europe, due to the reasonably large number of incredibly wealthy families whose members frequently had nothing else to do with their time, the important work of managing their estates having been contracted out to people trained for the job.
Even then, though, it was harder for middle-tier artists to make a living than it is now. There is today a huge difference in the volume of new work published compared to then, and most of this is due to the commercialisation of art.
I'm not saying patronage is useless, but I am saying it's unlikely to work as well now as it did at the time, and it doesn't promote the wide diversity of art that we're used to these days.