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.'"

Comments

hit them back

[downix]

They play hardball, hit them with a DMCA letter, pull all of the work down or else, and of course file for the maximum penalty per-hit on the stock images.  They don't want to play nice, then don't play nice.  "

Re:hit them back

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, let's use the DMCA for it's intended pupose for once.

Re:hit them back

[gtoomey]

This would be the most obvious starting shot. But it sounds like this could be awfully expensive in lawyer fees.

Re:hit them back

[Anonymous Coward]

By "intended purpose" you mean, of course, the exact same purpose it's always used for, but as done by a party you sympathize with for some unknown reason.

Re:hit them back

[Arancaytar]

If a criminal accused his victim of a crime, you sympathize with the victim more than you would normally with either a victim of false accusation or a victim of the crime. The audacity of it adds up.

(Also, these people are profiting off the copied art, claiming it as their own, and slandering the creator - it's not like some personal homepage being slapped for using clip art, or a movie excerpt being taken off Youtube. Plagiarism is a lot, lot worse than copyright violation.)

Nuke the suckers with the powers of law.

Re:hit them back

[hrvatska]

This would be the most obvious starting shot. But it sounds like this could be awfully expensive in lawyer fees.

The only ones smiling at the end of all this will be the lawyers.

Re:hit them back

[emandres]

Sounds to me like they're a struggling company with a less than marketable product. Add into that the ease of copying a product from them, and you're left with a company that's hardly pertinent in a a ruthless economy. So their solution? Turn into the bottom feeders of the economy, suing anything they lay eyes on. I personally hope this guy sues this company for everything they're worth, and maybe he'll rid the world of another copyright infringement shark.

Re:hit them back

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed. I always have a similar opinion when reading every article I read. I disregard anything that could be false or manipulated, leaving me knowing as much as I did before I started reading the article.

Re:hit them back

[digitig]

So their solution? Turn into the bottom feeders of the economy, suing anything they lay eyes on. I personally hope this guy sues this company for everything they're worth, and maybe he'll rid the world of another copyright infringement shark.

Trouble is, if their business model has collapsed to that extent, "everything they're worth" isn't likely to cover his legal costs. After all, pretty much their only significant asset would probably be the IP in their artwork, and if it's not really their IP it isn't worth much.

Re:hit them back

[Fulcrum of Evil]

You have it backwards: the intended purpose is to allow big fish to bully small fish and consumers, while the stated purpose is protection of copyright.

Re:hit them back

[Reziac]

We used to kill off the stupid fucks, or let them do themselves in with their own stupidity. But once we became civilized we started coddling stupid fucks, so they thrived against all natural odds and eventually overran us, and consequently the world is now being run by stupid fucks.

Inverse natural selection at work. :/

Re:hit them back

[Pantero Blanco]

agreed. I always have a similar opinion when reading every article I read. I disregard anything that could be false or manipulated, leaving me knowing as much as I did before I started reading the article.

What you finish the article knowing is one side's story, which is fine as long as you keep in mind that it's only one side's story. If it interests you, keep up with the story and keep investigating it.

While it is very well-written (which makes me inclined to believe him), Engle's post doesn't offer any evidence. It's a cry to rally defenders and donations, and that would make sense for him to do in either case. That's what the grandparent post was pointing out. From a look at the comments, scores of Diggers have already made up their minds and are charging off on their steeds as we speak.

Re:hit them back

[LoadWB]

As an advocate, you have presented very little to bolster your claim. As well, your gloat in the face of this man's plight, alleged or otherwise, is appalling.

I applaud you for choosing and sticking to a particular cause. But please get off your high-horse.

Copyright laws may be used to benefit both large and small, and I have seen instances of the later, while we all have seen instances of the former. Eliminating copyright and endorsing nothing but public domain is not the solution. Frequently people advocate complete elimination of a broken system instead of actually fixing it. I cannot abide such a position as it is too much like just walking away from a problem rather than actually analyzing and correcting the underlying issue.

Yes, we are seeing copyright and patent laws abused the world over. But put everything in the public domain? Too communistic for me, thank you. (Though probably not the best way to describe the situation, since the interpretation of Communism which we know involves the State taking possession of its peoples' creations and efforts for the benefit of all and the Greater Good, or however it sees fit. I simply lack a better way to describe it.)

I enjoy owning things, and that includes anything that I create. Sure, I may choose to make something available for others to use, but other items of my creation I want to stay under my control, so it represents what I want it to represent and not be usurped by ulterior, unintended, or inappropriate presentations.

Bill Waterston has mentioned plenty of times how the image of Calvin was essentially stolen from him and used for unauthorized depictions of him pissing on anything from a race car number to the Windows logo. Such depiction goes entirely against Mr. Waterston's intentions and desired representations of "Calvin and Hobbes."

And how would the creators of "Veggie Tales," a cartoon expressing religious morality, feel about a Larry the Cucumber vibrator?

It seems to me that too many people are very liberal with the use of other peoples' creations. And yet many of those same people become very defensive once the tables are turned.

This is not a bad thing!

[mark_hill97]

This will be your chance to make some money off their commercial use of your art, a good chunk of money at that. All you have to be able to do is prove when you created the works and when they started using them.

Go get legal advice now, make sure they have actual experience in IP law.

Good luck with your new found source of revenue!

Re:This is not a bad thing!

[davolfman]

Actually damages may be limited if he never registered his copyrights. If so this should be a lesson: always file your image copyrights, it's one small fee for as many images as you can cram on a disk.

Suprised this isn't more common

[olddotter]

I'm surprised this isn't more common. Sadly this will probably cost him in legal fees, and both he and the company are victims of a 3rd scam artist.

That they won't back down with presented with proof, ways against them. Do they think he is making it up or are they afraid of losing face?

Re:Suprised this isn't more common

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The stock image firm must know that they didn't create these images--they bought them from someone. I would hope they know who. Have they talked to this person? Done any checking to whether he in fact at some point worked for the person they're suing?

I'm not saying they should have known this before they filed the suit, but at this point some reasonable and verifiable allegations have been made. When someone accuses you of theft, I'd hope you investigate.

Re:that was fast

[JWSmythe]

    It wasn't Slashdotted. It was already hit by several other big sites. Slashdot's a day behind on knocking his site down. :)

    There's a link for the cache in the comments here. A blog posting, and lots of comments most of which saying the same thing. Get a good lawyer.

    They probably bought his images from a 3rd party, so they believe they own them. They'll hold onto that belief until it's gone through court. It'll probably turn out that it's almost impossible to track down the 3rd party, so all he'll eventually get is for the stock photo site to take down his work.

Re:How do you prove you created the content

[kaszeta]

95% of what I post to various photo sharing websites, under any license, is cropped. Mostly since it looks better cropped, but a nice secondary effect of this is that I have part of the image that no infringer can have.

I already have enough problems with images I post publicy

Re:Countersuit

[Kjella]

IANAL but AFAICT It doesn't really work that way. First you go after the guy who actually committed the violations. THEN you go after the people who paid him

No. Copyright is a strict liability issue, even if the stock photo agency did not know they are still liable but with lower damages. From 17504(c)(2): "In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200."

I don't see why I was modded troll. Sounds to me like this company is trying to get almost 20k$ and is going after his credibility and business relations which will surely cost him much more in the long run. This is already far past what can be resolved quietly, this will have to end up in court or he can kiss his career goodbye. And once you're already there, I see no reason to hold back. Even if you can't prove all that it'll get them scrambling to find out if it's true or not - maybe their internal will figure out this is something they'd better settle.

Re:Countersuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: The clients don't want anything to do with the guy and are unlikely to be cooperative when proving libel. It'll be his word against the defence, unless he has a few friends among his clients.

I found this out first hand when I took a former employer to court and tried to get a other former employees to back me up. Everyone disappeared under a rock, as no one wanted to get involved with courts, lawyers or risk getting dragged into someone else's fight. It's less trouble for them to just hold their tongues. The only people who would back me up were personal friends. (Fortunately I won the case without these people's help: the employer destroyed his credibility with the judge by falsifying records.)

The law may be on this guy's side, but I don't envy him one bit. He's in for a lonely fight.

Re:He needs to get a good lawyer, countersue...

[tomhudson]

It costs nothing more than postage and toner and paper for him to send them a DMCA notice.

Additionally, he should include in his demand a request for all the revenue they've generated from sales and licensing of his artwork, as well as a copy of any contracts in their possession.

They'll have to turn it over to him eventually if he goes to court, and they'll quickly realize that it's not worth going to court over piddling sums. The only one who will want to drag this out is the lawyers ... since they get paid no matter what.

Now if he had stenagrphically embedded an mp3 recording, he could ask for statutory damages of $150,000.00 per copy ...

Re:that was fast

[russotto]

"C" therefore has legitimate claim to the images.

No, "C" thinks it has legitimate claim to the images. Not the same thing.

Whether or not "C" was tricked by "B", they still have no claim against "A" (the actual author). And by going after "A"s clients, they threw away any chance to settle their mistake amicably, so now "A" is perfectly justified in releasing the lawyers on "C".

You are ... dead wrong

[Lead Butthead]

this laws are supposed to help this dude, or people like this dude.

The law protects the ones that has the financial means to afford its protection. Those others that lack the financial means are just... road kills.

Re:that was fast

[Thalagyrt]

That still applies in photography with RAWs. They have the serial number of the camera that took them embedded in the data, and they can't be edited, only converted and saved in a different format and then edited. The original RAW is just a dump of the sensor's state immediately after the shutter closes. They're also huge proprietary formats, and I don't think any photographer uploads them to stock sites.

On top of that, they're held as a much higher form of evidence than say a JPEG in court as they are extremely difficult to tamper with. Since a RAW image is not even an image, but just a memory dump of a CMOS or CCD, you'd have to know the specifics of that exact chip in order to edit it, and the only people who know that usually are the manufacturers of said chip.

So, "I've got the RAWs, what do you have, JPEGs?"