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.
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.
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.
Sorry, no, he was a fool.
If he had had a lawyer, he would have:
a) Been awarded a lot more money
b) Stuck the defendants with attorney's fees
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//
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.
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.
That "you can get more money with a lawyer" thing is exactly why the court systems are bogged up with frivolous lawsuits in the first place. It's the new American mentality and I can't stand it. This guy actually had a legitimate reason to sue, actually had the system work for him and give him his due, and all anyone can say is "He's an idiot for not having a lawyer to get him more money."
Just because the company infringing on his work was an asshat about it doesn't mean the photographer has to be. To do so would make him just like the RIAA we all despise. He got way more money than he lost from the infringement as it is; I'm certain stock photo rights do not amount anywhere close to $19,462. He only got that much because he had to go through all the BS to get what he deserved in the first place, and I'm sure he's more than satisfied with the award given. That "get more money and stick 'em with attorney fees" thing sounds downright malicious to me. Isn't it enough that the company was held liable for their use of the photograph in the first place? Nope, we gotta teach those bastards a lesson.
It wouldn't seem like such a good idea to you folks if you got sued, lost, and had to pay the awarded judgment, attorney's fees for yourself AND for the party suing you. Of course, you aren't an infringer of copyright, are you? Of course you're not.
Yeah, that just happened.
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.