Australian Federal Court Awards Damages To Artist For False Copyright Claim

New submitter BarryHaworth writes "In a decision handed down earlier this month, the Australian Federal Court awarded damages to Aboriginal artist Richard Bell over a false claim of copyright infringement. The claim related to a take-down notice claiming copyright infringement from film footage used in a trailer for a film being made by the artist. The court declared Mr. Bell the owner of the copyright and awarded him $147,000 in damages for lost sales of paintings and catalogues. At time of writing, YouTube does not appear to have caught up with the decision."

Comments

I wish this would happen in the USA

[MetalliQaZ]

... just one big case would be enough to bring some sanity to our system.

Re:I wish this would happen in the USA

[cpu6502]

Who the heck is Tanya Steele, and how could she be so dumb as to claim that she owns the copyright over a film maker's video???

ALSO: Didn't Megaupload win a False claim of copyright infrigement against a music company back in December? That would be a major win in our favor.

(Unfortunately the music company then called their friends in the Obamahouse, and they executed a worldwide raid in January, and shutdown the foreign site. Winning a court case is bad form in the U.S. of Corporation.)

Re:I wish this would happen in the USA

[Rasperin]

No they were winning, but with the recent criminal charges against it, they dropped it (was an article on wired yesterday, which means it's likely week old news).

Re:I wish this would happen in the USA

[g0bshiTe]

What I'd like to know is what capacity she was hired for. Nothing anywhere states what she did, only that she was contracted and paid in both money and a piece of the artists work.

Re:I wish this would happen in the USA

[g0bshiTe]

Between June 2009 and September 2011, while on a fellowship in New York, Mr Bell produced and directed approximately 18 hours of raw footage for a film “The Blackfella’s Guide to New York”. He engaged Ms Steele to help him make the film, and paid her for these services.

TFA only states she was hired, says he was producer and director not her.

Re:I wish this would happen in the USA

[Darinbob]

She helped make the film and was paid for this. That does not mean she owned the copyright however. Probably she just had some dispute with the artist and tried to block things to aid negotiations.

This Can't Be!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How could an artist be awarded a copyright? Only corporations are allowed to own those...

The defendant didn't show up

[nedlohs]

And didn't bother having counsel show up.

And lives on the other side of the world to the court's jurisdiction.

Hooray for a meaningless judgement.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it meaningless? It sets precedence. The next case in that jurisdiction is more likely to go the same way; that seems meaningful to me.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[dkleinsc]

1. Not showing up is often an indication that they have no leg to stand on.
2. The Australian government has lots of ways to collect, the simplest being that if the defendant does any business in Australia the government can simply seize assets up to the amount of the judgment. If that isn't an option, they probably have agreements with other countries to collect judgments.

So it's not meaningless - they lost their case, and have to pay.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[OzPeter]

And didn't bother having counsel show up.

And lives on the other side of the world to the court's jurisdiction.

Hooray for a meaningless judgement.

Yep .. the respondent didn't show up and also ignored the judges order to basically explain why she held copyright. So it seems that she cried wolf and couldn't back her claims up.
 
While Bell may find it a bit hard to collect from Tanya Steele, I'd say that she has now lost out on a lot of future work - who'd want to employ someone on a "work for hire" basis if after the fact they are going to dick with you over who owns copyright?
 
So in a sense it is a meaningless judgement, but I think it will have real world repercussions.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[nedlohs]

Not showing up is also often an indication you don't care about that court.

I predict not a cent of the judgement will ever be collected. Of course I could be wrong, but the US doesn't usually give a toss what some lowly foreign court says.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[nahdude812]

Is it meaningless? It sets precedence.

Not from a legal perspective it doesn't. It's just a claim for damages, with nobody disputing the claim. No consideration at all is given to the law because it is not actually tested.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[sed quid in infernos]

The courts in the U.S. enforce foreign judgments* on a regular basis. The big question here will be whether the Australian court had personal jurisdiction over the defendant, or whether there's some other defect to the fairness of the judgment. For example, if the defendant could show that she had no notice to defend the suit in Australia, then she could raise that as a defense in the U.S. court. See the Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act , a version of which has been passed in many states, for more information.

*In the U.S., "foreign judgment" can refer to either a judgment rendered in a foreign country or a a judgment rendered in another U.S. state.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[Anonymous Coward]

May be the FBI can extradite her to the Australia.

Re:The defendant didn't show up

[UnknowingFool]

It doesn't really set any precedence. To do that there must be something meaningful in the judgement other than summary judgement because one side did not appear. An example of precedence is Lenz v. Universal which established

Copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notices for content posted on the internet.

Background Findings from FCA 62

[OzPeter]

While the award was made in FCA246, it is based on background findings in Bell v Steele (No 2) [2012] FCA 62 (7 February 2012) which gives a bit more detail on what happened leading up to the award judgement.

But if you're not a corporation, you lack

[tepples]

everyone can copyright, you dont have to be a company

What you say is true in theory. But in practice, defending a work's copyright from the incumbent multinational publishers requires substantial financial resources. If you're not a corporation, you likely lack the resources to defend your copyright from false accusations of infringement. Nor do you have the resources to check the work that you are preparing to publish against every existing copyrighted work to make sure that there is no substantial similarity.

Re:But if you're not a corporation, you lack

[oldmac31310]

That is not the 'standard of infringement'. Don't spread misinformation AC. It really doesn't help.

Re:But if you're not a corporation, you lack

[jc42]

en that the standard of infringement is three consecutive notes, ...

That is not the 'standard of infringement'. Don't spread misinformation AC. It really doesn't help.

Right; the actual standard seems to be one note. ;-)

The textbook example of this is the infamous copyright on "Happy Birthday". It seems that the defense in some court cases has attempted to argue that the tune is simply the rather older song "Good Morning to All", with different words. The prosecution's counter-argument is that they changed not just the lyrics, but the tune. In particular, they used two pickup notes for "Happy" rather than the single original pickup note for "Good", and this suffices to make it a new musical creation that has its own copyright.

So far, I haven't actually found any clear explanation of whether any court has actually taken this argument into account in making a decision. Media accounts of court cases can be annoyingly vague. But it's at least interesting that copyright lawyers would think doubling a pickup note is sufficient to produce a new copyright.

I have seen (and passed on) the suggestion to musicians that they should make sure they only play a single pickup note when accompanying this song. That way, they can reasonably argue that they were actually playing "Good Morning to All", which is out of copyright. It's just that the singers ("Amateurs!") are so musically illiterate that they don't hear the difference.

There's a lot of absurdity going around on this topic.

False contradiction

[Another, completely]

The lost sales weren't due to copyright violations, they were due to a baseless legal action (actually, a threat of a baseless legal action) to enforce a non-existent copyright. It's easy for a person to think copyright is over-zealously enforced in general, and also be happy that people fail spectacularly when they try to use that zealous enforcement on copyrights they don't even have claim to.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

This wasn't about "lost sales" or "misappropriation of the artists material", this was about somebody else trying to prevent Mr Bell from using his own material by claiming that they owned it. Essentially using the legal system to bully somebody, that's a different scenario to what you're suggesting. Don't think you're going to get many hands...

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Kneo24]

I believe that the majority of the people you seem to be raging against in your post don't like the record labels for quite a few reasons. The biggest being is that the contracts are largely on the record label's side, and any damages they'd win in any copyright infringement case wouldn't go to the creator, but to the copyright holder.

I could be going out on a limb here, but I suspect they like rewarding people for their creations, not for their ability to sue anyone and everyone because they can. I'm fairly certain we all have discussed this topic to the point where I don't need to cite relevant articles for this... i.e. suing dead people, grandmother's who don't know how to use a computer, etc...

Re:It has now....

[cpu6502]

I don't understand what this "youtube has not caught up" phrase means? Did they pull they pull the artists video & refuse to put it back? Well it IS google after all. They do evil.

No wait. I think I got that motto wrong?

Re:It has now....

[icebraining]

Yes, you did. The motto never talks about doing evil or not.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[cpu6502]

(1) You shouldn't have been modded troll. We can disagree with one another w/o the name calling.

(2) Most record labels are seeking their OWN wealth, not to compensate the artist. I think this was more than proved when record labels stole over 1 billion dollars worth of songs from Canadian artists (for use on greatest hits compilation CDs) and never paid those artists for use of their material.

Record labels are in it to enrich themselves, and screw the singer or writer or musician. As is true with most corporations & their employees.