Image Lifted From Twitter Leads to $1.2M Payout For Haitian Photog

magic maverick writes "A U.S. federal jury has ordered Agence France-Presse and Getty Images to pay $1.2 million to a Daniel Morel, Haitian photographer, for their unauthorized use of photographs, from the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The images, posted to Twitter, were taken by an editor at AFP and then provided to Getty. A number of other organizations had already settled out of court with the photographer."

Comments

Sweet sweet copyright justice

[assemblerex]

Big business "borrows" images all the time. Nice to see they have to pay the working man (photographer) for once.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[rmdingler]

This is a big day for me on /. I have long awaited the moment I could point out a poster with a vested interest in his/her opinion.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[MacDork]

which everyone on Slashdot naturally adores (heh)

You must be new here. GPL only works because of copyright.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[Anonymous Coward]

What does stealing an image from someone on Twitter have to do with doctors insurance, again?
Surely, I must have missed an important step there or something.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[assemblerex]

The Hurt Locker made a profit as intended,but Voltage Pictures and are suing because they feel they are making less money than entitled. The guy in Haiti made no money at all, they just stole his images. So big business wanting every drop of blood versus a man who just wants a piece of the pie is an entirely different situation entirely. Public domain is saying you made enough money , now it belongs to everyone. This idea and public domain is under assault by companies like Voltage Pictures that want to make money forever.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[iluvcapra]

they weren't trying to redistribute it for free, they were trying to get a fee for redistributing it.

With respect, nobody is trying to redistribute anything for free. Either the creator distributes it and gets paid admission, or Kim Dotcom distributes it and gets millions in ad impressions. Ad revenue pays for the "free media revolution".

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[able1234au]

I am not a libertarian and don't care about people getting "above their station". This gives more insight into you, than me. And if you think insurance companies get rid of quacks then you truly are delusional. This is also a reason why the U.S. has much more expensive medical care than most other comparable countries. And more lawyers than other countries too. And it just encourages people to do frivilous lawsuits hoping to win the big lottery.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[XaXXon]

I believe there is a strong difference between commercial and non-commercial copyright violations.

When you take what someone is trying to sell and sell it yourself, you've clearly crossed all moral boundaries. You've removed people who demonstrably will pay for the content from the pool of people to pay the creator.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[iluvcapra]

2012 was a movie, some would call "shitty," that made $700 million. Shitty subjective quality is not, nor has ever been, a valid freetard alibi.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[suutar]

I realize nobody is promised a profit. My opinion has nothing to do with screenwriters in particular. I believe http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/ (particularly the balance sheet) explains my point of view sufficiently. After all, if big movies are so unprofitable, why do they keep making them?

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[Alioth]

No, I don't think you understand the Slashdotter's complaint in this case.

The issue here is the big copyright holders constantly try to get legislation passed and put in technological means (enforced by legislation) to stop people copying from them. They even go to the extent of trying to introduce "piracy is wrong" lessons in the school curriculum. But at the same time they are quite happy to pirate material off anyone they perceive to be unable to defend themselves, a classic case of "do what I say, not what I do". Quite rightly Slashdotters feel that those who constantly preach the "don't pirate our stuff" message and even go as far as getting legislation passed should be practising what they preach.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[Somebody Is Using My]

At this point, any agent who recommends that his client accepts a contract that promises a percentage of the net profits should be dismissed immediately (as incompetent), or perhaps sued for not acting in his/her client's best interests.

While this is true, it also condemns the "accounting" used by Hollywood in the same breath.

Just because "that's the way it is" doesn't mean it is right.

Movies are incredibly profitable for the Hollywood corporations. If their accounting methods were fair and above board, requesting a percentage of the net profits would be an equally fair way to distribute the monies of a successful movie. The salaried workers of the studios would get their weekly pay-check, and the contracted directors, actors, etc. would get paid based on the quality of their work, encouraging them to make the best movie they can.

That lawyers and agents have to demand a piece of the gross is a symptom of the problem, not the solution.

The Hollywood system is corrupt to its core, so it is no wonder it garners so little sympathy from Slashdot, even when it sometimes is in the right. Having bilked so many people out of billions over the years, few feel any hypocrisy in rooting for their opponents if it means Hollywood gets some long overdue comeuppance.

Without copyright, copyleft is unneeded

[tepples]

Without copyright, anybody with more time than money could disassemble, document, and distribute any proprietary fork of a program and turn binaries back into (assembly language) source code useful for cloning the added functionality in the Free branch.

The Getty Images that threatens website owners?

[nctritech]

Seems to me that this is another nail in the coffin. As many small business websites as they have gone after with extortion letters rather than letters trying to convert them to paying customers, I have no problem with Getty being dinged and dinged hard for doing the same that that they go after small businesses for. Getty has been a poor corporate citizen for many years, and at worst we should expect them to strictly abide by the same copyright rules that they are so adamant about.

Re:next week nigga be dead

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until your mom catches you using language like that on the internet and grounds you from the computer right before your big World of Warcraft raid?

Re:He didn't understand how the Internet works

[roc97007]

Well, speaking as a photographer, the thing about selling photographs on the internet is that you generally have to show people what they're about to buy. So right click and save image is always a possibility. (There are coding ways around this, most of which are trivial to break. That's why the solutions are legal instead of technical.)

I generally have to put up with some amount of "fair use", especially for events, and usually don't make an issue of it, especially if I get a photo credit. But sell one of my photos without my permission and the law will get involved.

Point is, it's possible he knew exactly how the internet works, but with the expectation that he can display his works without having them ripped off, any more than you'd take photos of paintings in a gallery and then sell prints of art you didn't own.

...so this facebook and google thing, where they mine photos and use them as advertisements, is going to get interesting if they use a copyright work from a pro. IANAL, but I don't think a TOS will help them there.

Re:When the shoe is on the other foot...

[Arker]

Actually the photograph is only supposed to be copyrightable if it contains a novel and creative element - i.e. if it's a good straight photo with no funny stuff (like you want for a print) then it is not copyrightable.