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Judge Rules Twitter Images Cannot Be Used Commercially
New submitter trekkie314 writes "Reuters reports that a Manhattan District Judge has ruled that AFP and the Washington Post infringed a photographer's copyright by re-using photos he posted on his Twitter account. The judge rejected AFP's claim that a Twitter post was equivalent to making the images available for anyone to use (drawing a distinction between allowing users to re-tweet within the social network and the commercial use of content). The judge also ruled against the photographer's request that he be compensated for each person that viewed the photos, ruling instead that damages would be granted once per infringing image only. This last point might have interesting implications in file-sharing cases — can it set a precedent against massive judgments against peer-to-peer file-sharers?"
If an individual were to tweet an image originally made available on a large corporation's website, you can bet the Judge would rule that damages would be granted per each viewing of it.
Damages for copyright infringement are always set on a per-work (rather than per-copy) basis, whatever the context. Judgments are huge in file sharing cases because they typically involve multiple tracks, each of which can fetch up to $750,000 if willful infringement is found.
It may be spelled out for *Twitter's* commercial use, but not for any company that wants to take your image and use it for themselves.
The judge also ruled against the photographer's request that he be compensated for each person that viewed the photos, ruling instead that damages would be granted once per infringing image only.
Once damages are granted for an image, would this ruling indicate that the defendant would be able to continue infringement without ever paying again?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
This seems like a fair and informed judgment to me. I don't think the photographer could harmed more by each view, and the distinction between re-use on Twitter and re-use elsewhere is a nuance I wouldn't expect most judges to understand. Let's hope he gets some filesharing cases and tells the RIAA they're owed $0.99 per song and no more.
-- "once per infringing use [posting or publishing, not per view] of image", so that whatever the "use cost" of the image is, the Post would have to pay full use cost, and AFP would also have to pay full use cost.
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-- smaller payment for a small magazine with low distribution and readersI can actually see the point and usefulness of "per view" of image, because I would guess that the contractual or negotiated "use cost" of the image would be different for different uses:
-- larger payment for a large magazine with large distribution and lots of readers
-- even larger payment for exclusive publication rights (which helps magazines sell even more copies, and also helps tabloid newspapers with paparazzi photos)
-- some other negotiated fee for web usage, with a sliding scale for number of impressions / views / click throughs.
So it would make sense that a web site that copied it and had a lot of page views of the image ought to pay more for infringing it than a web site that didn't. Unless of course, you bring in "statutory damages" which will not require bringing in any proof of dollar loss, merely prroof of copyright infringement.
Etrange. Tres etrange.
Okay, who's the wise guy who let common sense into the court room. That judge should be severely reprimanded for ignoring the natural order of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Now copyright applied the moment the work is fixed.
Unless someone posts it Public Domain or one of the CC flavors, it is Copyrighted, period.*
*US only. YMMV, especially if you're a foreigner, living in some country where everyone speaks backwards, wears funny clothes and eats smelly food. Also, the music! Don't get me started.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, it would be about as likely as you being able to download a photo from the Washington Post and use it just because they had a license to it from the original photographer.
A contract is a contract. People can claim otherwise on slashdot, but in the vast majority of cases the courts interpret the law correctly and don't make arbitrary decisions against clearly written agreements.
Can not be used commercially? Of course they can! They just need ask the owner first.. isn't this common sense in the US? In the Netherlands it is. News reporters contact people and ask for their consent before reusing the image they made and posted online.
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Hivemind harvest in progress..
No, it can't because it relies on other precedents and concepts. Specifically, the idea that transient cached data doesn't require a license or infringe. The judge ruled the only infringing copie were the ones displayed on the websites and not the ones created by web browsers caching the web pages. So called "file sharing" deliberately creates multiple infringing copies of a work. These are not transient cached copies created incidentally, but intentionally created "permanent" copies.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
>> Why didn't the owners of AFP and The Post just pay him off?
AFP didn't just not pay him off, after the photographer's agent sent take-down notices to AFP, AFP sued him. Then they sent a message over the wire service to kill all of Morel's own images, but not the identical images that had been sent out initially under the false credit.
AFP deserves even more of a serious courtroom smackdown equivalent
Aren't AFP the guys who want Google to pay them for just LINKING to their content?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Damages cover past infringement, an injunction can issue restraining future infringement. Breach of the injunction is a contempt which can result in imprisonment or fines which are not discharged by bankruptcy.
You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle.