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.
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.
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).
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.
Not disagreeing that this is a good outcome, or with the bearded geek hippies per se. Just sayin'.
Read Pynchon.
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.
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.
If said "bearded geek hippie" infringed copyright to push his business I would hope most slashdotters would applaud his being thrown to the wolves.. I certainly would.
Agreed, although you definitely understated the underhandedness of the loser in this case. Anybody who has a problem with this story should take a few moments to read the ruling. The devil here is in the details.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?