Slashdot Mirror
Designer Accused of Copying His Own Work By Stock Art Website
the_harlequin writes "A successful designer, who has a showcase of his own work available online, has had a stock image site accuse him of copyright infringement over his own illustrations, citing damages of $18,000. The story doesn't end there; the stock photo site hired lawyers, who have contacted the original designer's clients. The lawyers told them the designer is being investigated for copyright infringement and their logos might be copied, thus damaging his reputation. 'My theory is that someone copied my artwork, separated them from any typography and then posted them for sale on the stock site. Someone working for the site either saw my [LogoPond] showcase or was alerted to the similarities. They then prepared the bill and sent it to me. The good thing is that the bill gives me a record of every single image they took from me. That helps me gather dates, sketches, emails, etc. to help me prove my case. The bad thing is that despite my explanations and proof, they will not let this go.'"
http://www.jonengle.com.nyud.net/2009/04/accused/
Looks like stockart are good at doing this sort of thing. See this blog post for more info.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Something similar happened to me and I knew the lawyers realized they had no case but they wouldn't let it drop as long as their client was paying. My mother was a judge, so I knew how to aproach this. See the lawyers would never bring this to trial because the judge would repremand them when it was so clear they had no case. But that won't stop them from threatening me. So, first, because I wasn't a lawyer, I sent copious letters to the lawyers and their client repeatedly telling them they in as many ways that they had no case. Each letter sent to the lawyer cost the client money. Each letter sent to the client cost the client money when they turned the letter over to the lawyers as they must. Each reply from the lawyer, and they must reply to each letter, cost the client money. You can't wear lawyers down, but you can wear the client down.
Do not have a lawyer send the letters. It is considered unethical for a lawyer to send a letter to the another lawyer's cleint and it is really the client you want to get to.
By "intended purpose" you mean, of course, the exact same purpose it's always used for
Except for when it's used to remove material that isn't infringing the complainant's copyrights, either submitted by some sort of drooling subhuman (against a file manager) or a pissed off lawyer (numerous takedown notices for parodies) or at random (like this tutorial video) or by someone who just has no clue how this copyright thingy is supposed to work (Protip: unless you design furniture from cardboard boxes, pictures of furniture from cardboard boxes do not infringe your copyright).
It's a slashdot bias, actually. We only hear about the fuckups here. Letters used for their intended purpose come and go all the time without notice.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
what your counsel needs to do
1 begin a counter suit in a GO FOR BLOOD type mode
2 file an injunction with the court preventing them from "discussing details of the case(s) with parties not currently involved with the case" (why are they telling your customers that the status of their purchase may be in question??)
3 file a DCMA notice on the images in question
4 get lots of discovery, lots and lots of discovery
what you need to do
1 stop talking about the case! your last post should be that you did the DCMA notice and got your injunction
2 contact all of your clients and inform them of the situation and offer to send them proof of copyright (higher res version with predated meta stamps or whatever)
3 remember your actions should be clean and above the board (but hire a team that speaks MoFo grade law)
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No, "intended purpose" means protecting someone's legal copyright.
As opposed to:
- sending takedown notices for content that clearly doesn't infringe copyright
- warping copyright law to stop sales of compatible hardware (e.g. printer ink cartridges)
- preventing security researchers from publicizing software flaws that are putting users at risk
I feel that both your comment and its moderation are woefully ignorant of the point of the parent's comment. I refer you to the previous slashdot story.
Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims."
So, no its not the "exact same" purpose its "always" used for. In this case it appears it would be used for be used for its proposed intention. As for the "unknown reason" for sympathy, it appears that its not the the use that more than half would be being used.. to diminish competition.
What do I have (and by I, I'm just meaning any photographer in general)? Well, for one I've got an original file of that same image. Perhaps it contains slightly more resolution than the photo you've got (maybe it was downsampled, cropped, or modified in some other way). Perhaps it's in raw format, and that raw file can be converted (using the right settings) to generate the supplied art. The metadata in that file (camera, lens, focal length, focal distance, shutter speed, aperture, iso, capture time, etc) can be used to verify several things, like is the angle of shadows consistant with the time of day, is the depth of field consistant with what you'd get from the indicated lens+settings, etc. Of course, all of that could theoretically be reverse engineered from the photo, but it would take quite a bit of effort and be prone to error.
I then also have a couple other photos of the same scene from slightly different angles. I've got dozens (if not hundreds) of other images from the same location or event. Evidence like that would be MANY orders of magnitude more difficult to fake. If you could fake that, you'd have no need to steal images because you could obviously just fabricate any photo you'd like.
Of course, if that's not the nail in the coffin, then there is also the fact that I (hopefully) registered the photo with the copyright office prior to your first documented usage of the image. And barring that, maybe I've sold the image to some other company before your first documented usage, and they can be called on to testify to that.
In short, even in the film days, an original negative was the least of the evidence a photographer had to prove his ownership, and in the age of digital photography, that same evidence is still every bit as useful.