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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.'"
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. "
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
It's slashdotted before any posts are here.
this laws are supposed to help this dude, or people like this dude, if this dude fail to protect itself, then our system has failed, and we don't need any protection. If the force of the strong is the one that prevail, theres no need for laws.
-Woof woof woof!
Sue them back for damages and that all their customers cease immidiately from using his work. That should get you a very concerned lawyer on the other side of the table who's probably ready to settle.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If you have all of the original files of the art, file a DMCA notice to them to remove your art from their site and if they continue to be a problem, counter sue them for each image for maximum damages.
and begin selling stock images through the site he pwns as a result of the countersuit. A good lawyer should be able to get him some serious money (gratis) if he has adequate proof that the works are his.
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!
http://www.jonengle.com.nyud.net/2009/04/accused/
Coral Cache mirror of the page.
Forget world peace, bring on -1 pointless
so that the damages you get from them for harrassing you about YOUR own creations make them scream hard.
Read radical news here
Judging by your description, I'm guessing that you haven't registered the copyright of your images.
Big mistake. If you don't register a copyright within four months of publication, you cannot get statutory damages. You can only recover actual damages, and the burden will be on you to prove them.
1. Hire a lawyer
2. Register your copyrights (you still have to register before you can file suit)
3. File suit (not just for copyright infringement, you clearly have a claim for defamation as well)
4. Send DMCA notices to the site, the site's ISP, and any of the site's customers that are using the images (and the customer's ISPs).
The "bad" batman is on a crime spree, framing the "good" batman.
Following this plotline, the solution to the OP's problem is quite straightforward:
He needs to enlist help from the Joker, who is now facing some serious competition in the battle for Gotham.
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?
Think Deeply.
If they had really taken the images from you, you would have known about this a long time ago. Instead, they made unauthorized copies of them.
Brought to you by the Please Don't Refer to Copyright Infringement as Theft department.
Stop hoarding your mind's creations. You were inspired by others, let others derive from your work.
Slashdot's not what it was 10 years ago. Bunch of Randroids living under fascism and thinking they're free (bailout of the rich funded by the working man to preserve the class hierarchy? that's what it's all about...).
"... awfully expensive in lawyer fees." Apparently there are almost no lawyers in the U.S. who are true partners of their clients. Their clients are just a way to make as much money as possible. Getting involved with a lawyer is often just making something else bad happen to you. Most lawyers have no caring whatsoever if they handle the case poorly; there just is no quality control. Lawyers commonly lie about how much work they did.
The problem is that some people get so excited about representation that they will sign anything handed to them. And then complain when they find out what it means... Just be careful what you sign in the future and try to settle this away. There is a difference if you grant them exclusive rights to something or just sign away all your rights to said work.
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
if i take a photo, put a CC license on it , but someother party take a screenshot of it and passes it off as owned by them, is there any effective way to prove i took the photo. Yes i could upload to say flickr and that would prove i had the photo at a particular date, but it doesnt really prove i took the photo. What in your opionion is the best way to protect your work. I give all my public photo's a CC license anyway but i would'nt want someone else passing them off as theres.
I'm not one to normally swear on slashdot, hence posting as AC, but it has to be said that stockart.com are a bunch of fucking cunts.
I hope they get their collective asses kicked bigtime over this debacle.
Exactly. They are dishonest. See the comment above.
While you don't have to register copyrights to *have* a copyright, there is a mechanism to register copyrights with the US Copyright Office (well, if you're in another country, this option would probably not be available to you, though I'm not sure). When you register the copyright, you upload a copy of the work that you are registering.
While it is possible for a copyright registration to be overturned by a court, if presented with solid evidence (as in the SCO vs. Novell case where The SCO Group tried to fraudulently register copyrights), my understanding is that the registration puts the proceedings in your favor - if you hold a registration, the court assumes you own it until proven otherwise - you don't have to prove that you own the copyright, the other party has to prove you do NOT own the copyright). The registration also increases the amount of damages you can get in a court action (I think you can get triple damages plus attorney's fees).
It does cost money to register copyrights though - I think it's $35 for online registration, so if an artist has hundreds of small items they wish to copyright, it could get expensive to register them all individually. It might, however, be possible to collectively register them (that is, to have 100 or 200 photos as part of a single copyright registration), but I'm not sure about that.
Outside of copyright registration, I think the way courts decide copyright ownership is based upon someone providing the earliest proof of publication (though I'm not sure - I am not a layer, this isn't legal advice, etc, etc). If you can prove that you had published the image on flickr or some other site at an earlier date than the other party can show proof of their publication, that might do it for you.
I really think, though, that more open source and creative commons software/content producers should register their copyrights. It really does provide you a certain wall of protection against
Other than, I'm not sure what you can do. Registration of your copyrights is probably the best way to give you a strong case though.
Everybody email accounts@stockart.com and support@stockart.com to tell them how you feel. You can also call 1.800.297.7658.
I'd definitely turn around and sue them for selling your material, harassment, lose of business, etc.
They're trying to destroy him so he has to turn around and crush the scum bags.
It really does provide you a certain wall of protection against. . . claims of the sort discussed in this article, by someone else trying to claim your copyrights.
I had a PHP program on the internet for a while. Released it in 2003 with a certain name.
In 2006, someone came along and named their program with the same name. Normally I would have been okay, but it served exactly the same purpose.
I emailed the author and asked them politely to change the name. They responded back and admitted they saw my PHP program and it's name, but "figured they would use it anyway", and then had the gall to tell me to merge my project with his! I of course turned him down, not only because he was outright stealing the name but also because his program was an outright mess. He then spewed some bullshit that if he got more users and was 'bigger', he would then own the name. He then said that a movie studio can just suddenly own a student movie if they film it with the same script, characters, and actors, but just sell more copies.
Yeah, he was an idiot.
Unfortunately I was poor and didn't have the money to start court proceedings on him. The program I released was free; if he thought he really could take the name away by getting more people to download his, I could just play defense.
Karma was a bitch though, and about 6 months later his forum was just page after page of spambots.
Posting anon because I think he has a well-to-do mommy and daddy and he might try to sue me for libel or somesuch :(
In short, I understand how violated this guy must feel.
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.
If you have high resolution data or vector files this should be a technical proof that the work is your creation.
John Fogerty?
nail in the coffin of copyright...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
This one seems like a no brainer. Hire a LAWYER.
I'm no trying to be a smart-ass, but you obviously have a case and the proof. I think you will most likely be able to counter sue for lost profits, maybe damages and all that other fun stuff. They are not playing nice, so you need to protect yourself.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
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)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
You need a competent lawyer. In the end, you should come out of this way ahead. You can countersue for libel, defamation of character, and copyright violations.
I have an occasional problem with photo sites copying this image. It gets quite a few links, to which I don't object, but outright copies I have to bug people about. The worst case was a site which used it as a "smiley" in their forum system. It took them a while to untangle that. They were very unhappy about having to take it down, because removing it messed up old forum posts, but eventually they did. Right now, I'm getting Photobucket to take it down; someone uploaded a copy there.
(I used to have that animation of a man jumping off a building on my Downside.com site. But after September 11, 2001, when people really were jumping off the World Trade Center, I took it off the home page of Downside. It continues to pop up on the web, eight years later. It's a black and white animated GIF, made as a full 3D animation with Softimage|3D and the Animats physics engine, then processed into a simple silhouette and run through a GIF compressor. One had to do things like that back in the dialup era to put interesting motion on a web page.)
if they were contacted by the original artist? Would they not believe the artist as being the original? Surely they have to realize that at some point an authentic, original artist will one day approach them or that it isn't out of the realm of possibility that they may accuse an authentic, original artist of stealing his own work so why aren't they realizing that yet? They must think they can sell art and never have to be in contact with any original artist. They must think those chances are astronomical enough for it to never cross their collective minds that they are currently suing someone who made it possible for them to make money. We may be at the point now where it is a matter of saving face. They may prefer to continue the lawsuit rather than say they made a mistake.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
I feel for this guy because I know how it is. I recently had copies of my videos stollen from me and posted on various websites and then I get a notice from YouTube that I am in violation of copyright for my own work that has ME IN IT and they are allowing me to use it but all ad reveinue goes to the other user. My videos were posted years before this company posted my clip. I can't afford a copyright lawyer and youtube refuses to accept the proof that I own my video. I sent a DMCA to them on the other video and got a reply that they have proof of ownership. It's insaine how a big company can screw the little guy and there is nothing we can do about it. Unless you want to shell out the money that honestly I don't have to spend with the economy the way it is now. Sorry for the rant.
> The bad thing is that despite my explanations and proof, they will not let this go.
Not so bad. If all you say is true in the end they will pay you quite a bit of money (including all your legal expenses).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
I have no idea where you're pulling that from, but it's gotta be a place where the sun ain't shining too often.
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.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Without actually looking at the evidence, nobody can tell who's right and who's wrong. It's plausible that someone stole this guy's art and uploaded it, it's plausible that the stock company ripped him off deliberately, and it's also plausible that he uploaded the images himself to sell them multiple times.
Let the courts work it out: that's what they are there for.
(As far as copyright is concerned, once you sell the rights to your works, you don't own them anymore.)
It's time for government-run digital timestamp services that will sign any hashcode-sized number and return it to you via email, and to require that any assertion of copyright over digital material include a timestamped signature for its hash.
Leave it, as a last resort, to the courts to decide whether an allegedly infringing copy is similar enough, but make the copyright precedence if they are so a simple matter of comparing timestamps.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
The lawyers will end up ruling the world. Its too bad people can't make an honest living anymore without fear of a "goliath" coming in and suing you. They have more money and resources, and fighting them just detracts you from using your true talents to produce artwork. Its sad really...
Play Free Games at FreeGameGallery.com. We have Flash Games for Everyone!
John Fogerty had been the lead singer of and primary songwriter for the band Creedence Clearwater Revival ("CCR"). The record label for CCR was Fantasy Records. When Fogerty started his solo career, Fantasy Records sued him, saying that his song "The Old Man Down the Road" was simply a rewrite of his CCR song "Run Through the Jungle."
As I recall Fogerty's argument at trial (which he won) was basically that he always wrote in the same basic style and there were bound to be similarities. There was a second lawsuit for a song on the album that seemed to reference the head of Fantasy Records, Saul Zaentz ("'Zanz Kant Dance'" but he'll steal your money.").
Anyway, the case went all the way to the US Supreme Court (Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517 (1994)) on the issue of granting Fogerty attorney's fees. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1750.ZO.html .
I went to Penn State. According to a few professors I attended claimed the school had, while I was there, ~2003-2007, had a policy where the plagiarism rules applied to plagiarizing yourself.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
FYI there's a pattern to this sort of behavior from Gates; Years before, he lifted the "Tiny Basic" source code from a user's group magazine and sold it to Tandy (as in Radio Shack) for their computers.
I won't go into other details of their behavior like what happened with OS/2, Stac, DR-DOS, Netscape, but Microsoft has a pattern of stealing other people's work.
It's a given that you cannot infringe your own copyright. If this designer still owns the copyright on his images then he should be suing for everything from malicious prosecution to SLAPP, and most any lawyer should be happy to take his case.
If this designer sold the entire copyright (foolish), or did it as Work for Hire (foolish) then he may be out of luck here.
If the designer does still own his own copyrights, and wants to cause trouble even through he has licensed them to this site, then he should be suing for Misuse of Copyright and getting their license to use his work revoked.
Disclaimer: IANAL, so hire someone who is.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Information wants to be free".
"If your business model doesn't work, that's not my problem."
"Copyright is an artificial restriction. Nothing is lost when something is copied. It's like if you could copy someone else's car while they still have the original car - it doesn't hurt anything."
Whuh? Did slashdot get dns jacked and steered to some other forum? I'm confused.
It occurred to me, that a sensible course of action, might be to scan (in hi-res) any artwork that I'd drawn which I could then send to stockart with the following text:
"In response to the recent actions taken by StockArt towards a graphic designer (which I will make no remark on) has led me to believe that the only way to ensure, that, in future, a similar situation does not occur to me is to forward on hi-res versions of all of my artwork to you and your lawyers. I would be grateful if you could keep this email on file, so, that, in future, should someone upload an image you can compare it to this one - and all future images that I send. Needless to say, the attached image is (c)me.
Please find attached 512Mb PSD file. 6,230 images to follow.'
I dunno... just a thought...
I know it's popular to be all superiorly cynical here, and talk about how everything's a conspiracy against the little guy, and big corps/big gov are all necessarily evil, but come on guys - y'all are modding this high insightful? Anyone's who's paid any attention can see that the law in fact does protect those who can't "afford its protection", whatever that means. It doesn't protect them as well as it protects those who have the resources to vigorously protect their own rights, but frankly I don't think you want to live under a government where that's not the case. It's easy to say that the police are corrupt and such, and in some cases they are, but to make a system where the poor can go to court and sue people just as easily as the rich would mean either truly massive taxation, the nationalization of the legal profession, or placing artificial limits on how many rights you can protect that scale with your income. None of these sound particularly appealing to me.
Inequalities are a fact of life in a free society. It sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
The only effective way to stop all this silliness will be to abolish copyright completely. I'm sure I'll get plenty of indignant replies from copyright holders, but the indignation they feel about the prospect of losing this immoral legal 'right' is like that felt by slaveholders about the proposed abolition of slavery.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Hence, it's more important than ever for digital artists to register their work with the copyright office. They become the arbitor of who created the art first.
Assuming this guy is telling the truth... If this company is claiming $18,000 in damages, they company must believe they own the registered copyright. It's possible the thief actually DID register these works. (AFAIK, the US Copyright Office doesn't check one registrations against all others when filed, the way the Patent Office does.)
However if the original creator registered his own copyright on these images, then it will simply be a matter of comparing his registered copyright to the company's, and comparing the respective dates.
This is slander, and interference with a contractual business relationship. I'd expect them to get slapped down very hard over that one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I thought he meant a lawyer shouldn't write to another lawyer directly, but apparently he mean a lawyer shouldn't write ...
Well actually I'm not sure anymore what he meant:
a letter to the another lawyer's cleint and it is really the client you want to get to
When it comes to lawyers, and you have a case that works against them, don't spare them. They won't spare you even if it means your financial situation is wiped out. No 'morals' or 'right' here, just a blind interpretation of the legalese.
If you can't afford legal fees, find a bulldog lawyer who is willing to take them on with the DMCA for 25% of the take, no other fee required. If you still need money, solicit donations at your website.
Write letters to each of your clients explaining the situation and detailing the options, one of which should be the reasons why they need to join you in the fight. Hopefully some of the designs you did for them will have become valuable brands that they cannot afford to lose.
Go as far as demanding both compensation and restitution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restitution) for frivolous lawsuits, explaining how the incompetent research of the lawyers has cost both the legal system and you. The judge will be as pissed off as you are.
This is going to take time and lots of your energy at a time when you need it most. Just do it.
How in the world did we ever form civilization?
With much effort from Sid Meier.
Next you're going to blame him for the large number of copyright-infringing Pirates!, aren't you?
It's not the stupid fucks that mess things up long-term.
and how does Google know that?
A nice house in the Bahamas, a Porsche in the garage and a nice retirement pension to me.
This kind of litigation is actually pretty common. Look at the older somewhat similar case of Harmony Gold VS FASA. The wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech#Miscellaneous) doesn't have a great amount of detail but in essence FASA purchased a bunch of Mecha designs for their game Battletech from a japanese artist. These same designs were also used in Macross, the artist believing since Macross was a Japanese Anime and FASA was an American company neither side would really bump into each other. For the most part he was right until Harmony Gold came along and purchased the rights to Macross and put it into the American market as Robotech. Several years later and two cartoon series later (Battletech and some crazy ass Robotech tie in with Exo Squad), and both Harmony Gold and FASA are at each others throats each one holding what they believe to be valid exlusive rights to the designs for about 12 different mecha. The legal rangling got pretty bad between both sides. Long story short the case was eventually settled out of court due to gross legal incompetance on Harmony Gold's part, and a lack of funds on FASA, but legal battles over who owns the rights over images like this can get pretty brutal. Just because you THINK you own the rights to something doesn't mean you in fact do.
Its sad that Stock Art is made out as the 'evil party'. Its entirely possible that a another person claimed Jons art as theirs and sold it to Stock Art, and Stock Art think they are in the right.
Possibly the lawyers of stock art giving misleading advice (maliciously or mistakenly) to Stock Art, and the lawyers themselves are the only vultures in the case.
The consequences of being slashdotted? Ruin Stock Arts name. No consequences for the lawyers.
If you have proof that the images are yours, send a take down notice immediately. Not just to the stock image site but to any other sites out there are now using your images having bought them from the stock image site.
Doing so will stop the stock image company from being able to make any more money from your images.
Well of course everything is derivative. YOU are derivative. You have copied what your education system has foisted onto us all so you can graduate and become yet another derivative cog in the system.
If you were given a chance to see something truly original... you would go insane from trying to comprehend it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsIncomprehensible indeed.
This is slander, and interference with a contractual business relationship. I'd expect them to get slapped down very hard over that one.
It's also a clear violation of the Bar rules of ethics (4.4) in Washington DC, where these lawyers are. They could get admonished, suspended, or even disbarred, and I hope they do. I encourage Jon to file a Bar complaint in addition to litigation.
A google search on "stockart.com" gives their site and then a page of links about this issue. Not all publicity is good.
And then there's this list of previous federal cases.
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.
There are a lot of things that the folks at Google are capable of doing, and I believe "counting" is one of them. :-D
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Hit that stockart.com site with everything you got, from DMCA takedown notices to accusations of pedophilia, beastiality and warez. If that doesn't deter them, go for the DDoS and blackmail option. If they are going to take you out of business, take them with you and don't stop at just the company - go for the CEO and owners personally as well; nothing like accusations of pedophilia and maybe a bit of terrorism to really fuck up their lives. That'll teach them NOT to mess with people just for the fun (and profit) of it.
That way you have proof that you made it.
We went a round with Getty Images a couple of years ago: we had licensed several images years before, they found them online and claimed we had stolen them. It turns out that our account records had somehow been lost: the account was active, but all records of the transaction in question were gone. We had (stupidly) not kept a copy of a printed receipt, all we had were credit card statements saying that we had paid several hundred dollars for something. That, of course, was totally unsatisfactory to the collection agency.
Lots of unnecessary stress, and this a few days before Christmas. In the end we (perhaps stupidly) settled with them.
Since then, we have not licensed a single image from them or any similar agency. If you need an expensive image, hire a photographer directly! If you need a cheap image, look for a royalty-free or creative-commons image (although that also not totally safe). We advise all of our clients (and anyone else who will listen) to avoid the stock art agencies at any cost. This article gives yet another good reason to do so...
What's next? Me accusing me of harassing myself?
"I said NO, but I knew that I wanted" ;-)
In the future, the US economy will be completely based on litigation.
How much wood would a woodchopper chop if a woodchopper would chop wood?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Goldman One of the most obvious plagiaristic companies/individuals ever.
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
The only solution, as far as I can tell, is out and out revolt where we rise up as a mob, line these people up against the wall, and put a bullet in their head.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
This would definitely put a crimp in the income that people could earn from things that are easily copied.
Big name authors would have to have a day job to make up for the fact that their works could be distributed for 'free' by the first person that makes a copy of their work.
Small time musicians, those that publish their own work, could have their works 'lifted' by groups with bigger audiences. The other groups, making most of their money by concerts and direct sales, would benefit by having new material that they got for 'free'.
Artists and photographers might have things a little easier IF they sell the services of creating art and photographs as opposed to the end products. They could argue that lack of copyrights means they have to get full value front end.
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