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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."
Big business "borrows" images all the time. Nice to see they have to pay the working man (photographer) for once.
Getty Images had about $945 million in revenue last year, according to a March credit report by Moody's. That's up from $857.6 million in 2007, the last full year in which the company reported financial results.
That is 2008....do you think they really care about part of 1.2 million? Do you think it will change attitudes and behaviors?
Silence is a state of mime.
I had to use urban dictionary to understand wtf a "photog" was:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=photog
Slang for Photographer apparently. Although I've never heard or seen anyone use the term and apparently those writing the summary title thought they were being "hip".
Getty Images makes no bones about asking a lot of money for their images and making sure they get paid. I own a business that among other things produces fine art prints. Some time back a customer asked about a print of a particular Old Master painting that wasn't listed in any publisher's catalog. Tracking down a high-resolution image that I could print myself led me to Getty Images. The minimum royalty for this kind of use was in the $300 range. The rep came right out and said that their royalty structure would not be economical for one-off print like I was seeking.
This, BTW, is for an image that is theoretically in the public domain.
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.
How is $1.2m the maximum penalty available under the law for this case, when back in 2009, Capitol vs Thomas, a jury awarded $1.92m to Capitol?
Even at $1.92m, that was NOT the highest they could have gone either, the judge established that each infringement would be penalized at $80k, down from a maximum of $150k per instance!
That would have worked out to $3.6m.
Why weren't AFP et al penalized per infraction, vs having a cap for the whole incident?
I don't understand why Getty's client settled ... Getty might be aware of the lack of due diligence on AFP's part, but I assume their clients were not. How can they be held responsible?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131122/16151225339/statutory-damages-strike-again-afp-getty-told-to-pay-12-million-using-photo-found-via-twitter.shtml
Start with: AFP sued Morel first. Wait, they sued him for using HIS image? Basically yes, they claimed commercial defamation against him. even though he sent them a letter, and had not gone public...
They claimed Twitter's TOS allowed them to take the image and use it without pay or attribution even.
Then they claim Twitpic's TOS allowed it when that didn't pan out.
After that, rather than trying to settle, they stuck to their guns and took it to trial anyways. And at trial...they lost. And they were penalized with 1.2 million in statutory damages the maximum award of 150,000.00 per infringement (there were several uses of the photo in question apparently) by the jury. Plus an award for DMCA violations (reports are sketchy on the actual amount, but 16 violations with a minimum of 2,500.00 each so its not chump change either), AND attorney's fees.
So, your premise that this guy is a douchebag and sued these guys in court to get a massive payout on some silly little pic is actually factually incorrect and entirely baseless if you had bothered to read either of the stories covering this. AFP and Getty were the dickbags here, and they apparently pissed the jury off. Everyone SHOULD cheers these kinds of payouts, they ARE ridiculous. This level of statutory penalty should make eyes pop and faces redden, and everyone should sit up and take notice when a big company gets hit by them and not just individual citizens who really will never pay even a fraction of these amounts. I hope this slows down the copyright maximalists a little bit, to see that it can and will eventually begin to bite them and with the world at large fairly sick of seeing the big guys push around people, maximum damage awards will be fairly common against them.
Thethe main exception to that would be if you were doing something for compatibility or such and didn't even really know what it was doing in the first place
That's exactly the case for the printer driver problem that kicked off the GNU project. Mr. Stallman and friends wanted to interoperate with a printer, and its manufacturer was being obstructive.
The headline of a Slashdot story and the subject of a Slashdot comment are limited in length. Comment subjects are limited to 50 characters. Headlines can be longer, but they still have a limit that I happen not to have tested. Some people have a habit of abbreviating Microsoft as M$ in subjects to save seven characters.
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.
The "image" may be in the public domain but photographs of it are not.
Depends on the country. In the United States, the Southern District Court of New York ruled in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation that faithful photos of a public domain painting aren't original to get their own copyright.
Handling and photographing (the lighting) artwork irrevocably damages it a little each time.
In what way does a camera on a tripod pointed at an exhibit taking a long exposure with the museum's existing light damage the exhibit?
...an appeal. AFP is not going to take a 1.2m verdict lying down. I might feel a little sorry for the AFP if AFP hadn't filedthe first suit that sounds like they were pre-emptively stripping the photographer of his copyright with an aggressive lawsuit. I worry more that this verdict will ultimately be used by corporations on little people.
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?
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.)
Yeah, use a browser other than IE and/or some sort of flashblock.
I make a point of saving any images on websites that attempt to block 'save as' by disabling the right mouse click. I normally find this out when I'm trying to either open up a link in a new tab or go back one handed (so no ctrl-click). If the site is 'personal' enough that they're probably paying attention, I sometimes email it to them going in a polite way 'Your protection is both a failure and an annoyance'.
I don't read AC A human right
Showing up in court, bringing a lawyer and all that would most likely cost way over $1000, regardless of what the case was or how much preparation was required. If the original photographer settled for an amount below that, which isn't that uncommon as a publishing fee for news photographs, they'd still be cheaper off than going to court and getting themselves off the hook.
In the USA, you usually can't get your own costs reimbursed for such a case, even if you win. In other countries, you often only get a predetermined fee which seldom covers the full costs but only a standard figure for the things your lawyer did for you. This makes going to court often not worth it, even if you're right, making justice something only the wealthy can afford....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
At least someone managed to monetize the tragedy that Haiti was.
God (or the spaghetti monster) forbid the money spend on those lawsuits and the payouts would go to, you know, the victims of the earthquake.
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.
It doesn't work so well; if you use a small image size for sample purposes, and calculate the lowest resolution that is transparent for the size and sample medium selected, and then, you watermark your image samples. You can look at the sample, but not easily reuse it for publication --- as soon as you need to push it to a new medium, and expand the size; there will be quality issues.
any more than you'd take photos of paintings in a gallery and then sell prints of art you didn't own.
Makes sense that the curators don't allow cameras in art galleries, anyways
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.
If the photographer uploaded the photo to facebook, then the TOS will allow the social network company to use the photo, for sure.
Otherwise, they may use the TOS to try to transfer responsibility to a user that uploaded the photo.
I'm pretty darn sure, some Facebook or Google user, will eventually scan a print they had purchased of a photo of themselves as their profile image that was taken by some portrait photographer, or their school photo, without the right permission, it's probably already happened many of times; and judging by the apparent attitude of some photographers, one of the user's will probably wind up getting sued over uploading their own portrait, eventually.
Yeah, use a browser other than IE and/or some sort of flashblock.
Ahah! Check-mate! Flash-based / JavaScript-based image viewer; that renders the image, without your browser having access to a JPEG formatted file ---- complete with DRM; so if you use screencast / screenshot software to snap a picture of the display; your screen capture will show a little black box, instead of the image.
Wow, a highly-moderated account of an evil holder of the dreaded copyright — a profiteer on the information, that Wants To Be Free[TM]! On Slashdot!
What's the world coming to? Next we'll start using terms like "theft" and "stealing" when talking about digital photographs, even though you still have your file on your computer, when I do right-click->Save Image on mine.
Well, maybe, it is Ok for you to be doing this by yourself. But the second you decide to delegate the pursuit of thieves to someone else (like PhAA, perhaps?) , then we'll denounce both you and that delegate (MafiAA!!) as "greedy" producers of "trash", which nobody would be buying anyway.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
...whereas before the Internet, people first paid and only then were shown the photos...?
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 definitely wouldn't want to live in a jurisdiction that would legally prohibit mere saving a picture from a web page. Are you insinuating that there is indeed such a horrible place in the world?
Ezekiel 23:20
Just fetch a copy from your caching proxy, then.
Ezekiel 23:20
Better than DRM: export "web resolution" JPG for online viewing. Everyone can see your pictures, but if they want publication quality, they have to come to you.
I think the point is not that it should be illegal to save an image from a website, but that preventing companies from lifting people's work and reselling it is something that requires a legal response rather then a technological one.
Then I don't see your image at all, you have no potential for a sale.
Plus, well, it might be a touch more of a pain, but I have non-standard image capture software and access to my cache. At some point it becomes a challange. ;)
I don't read AC A human right
Lol- they didn't reprint the photographs in question in the original article. I guess ABC (Australian Broadcasting Service, the company in the URL of the OP) didn't want to pay a random Haitian photographer. They seem to have no problem paying Getty - a search for Getty on their site turns up lots of images.
I guess you have to demonstrate ownership AND be in the special club to get royalty payments.
an agreement to opt in or opt out of the intellectual property system. If a company opts in, it is required to pay royalties for all the IP it uses, with no exceptions or other get-out clauses. Anyone who is not in the system is free to use others' IP as they wish, BUT ALSO has no protection over their own IP.
I know you're just throwing an idea out there, but, really?
Imagine you run a company that makes a popular CAD/CAM product. Obviously, to enable copyright protection, you'd want to opt-in.
Now imagine you run a company that uses that CAD/CAM software, to produce plastic thingumies. Why would you opt-in? Why would any such company opt to pay for the CAD/CAM software, other than for support?
Also, even if it's in your company's interests to opt-in, you could always have a buddy set up another company which doesn't opt-in, and have them do the work that necessitates using the expensive software.
Now imagine you didn't opt in, and the plastic thingummy design/factory process/etc. was borrowed by a competitor...
What does e.g. Foxconn have going for it? Well, it has a lot of capital, but mostly it has secrets! secrets to running a highly efficient build process. If it were entitled to no protection for these secrets, because there was no method in law of recognising them, anyone with enough capital would be able to poach Foxconn's employees and build an equally efficient competitor.
Artificial creation of companies to escape duties or take advantage of the system is nothing new. Here, the "buddy"'s soul task is producing IP using the CAD/CAM software.
Under this system, many companies would pop up electing to not create content and simply use others. If you could only use the content released by other companies in that system, such systems already exist. It's called Public Domain and you are free to release work in to it. Similarly, you can use other licenses such as Creative Commons Share Alike to require your work and all derivatives be shared. It wouldn't be hard to make a license that required all IP produced by the entity to follow the same, though it could be gamed by having a separate legal entity to handle that material.
AJ Henderson
I pronounce photog as "pho-tog". I think it is a Vietnamese dish.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
When their publication destination is a website (or even newsprint), "web resolution" is also publication quality.
Bottles.
> I'm curious, how do you define "sell" when a website uses your work on a page riddled with ads?
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but the phrase "directly or indirectly" probably applies. If a content provider takes one of my photos and puts it on a website "riddled with ads", they're at very least getting indirect financial gain from the photo being on the site. (Else, why put it there?)
> Also, should imagery by a "pro" be treated any differently than from an amateur or do the big boys know they're breaking the law and assume you don't give a shit enough to sue?
This is my opinion, but I don't think it makes any difference. For instance, before I turned pro, I happened to be at the scene with my camera during a major flood. (Levee break.) At the time I didn't understand that the photos I took were unique, and this was before sharing photos on the internet was common, so the question never came up. But there's no question that me, as an amateur, owned those photos, and would expect compensation if someone used them for financial gain. (Appearing in a newspaper in conjunction with a news item is financial gain, because it helps sell advertising space.)
This is not an amateur vs pro thing. Merely that a pro is probably more conversant with his rights and how to pursue them, (and with the means to pursue same) because it's part of the skill set. If Facebook/Google uses your photos to attract ad space without compensation, I'd call that theft regardless of whether you offered your photos up for sale or not. (The exception is if you were asked and had consented to have your photos used.) A difference, as you pointed out, is that an amateur is less likely to care.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Wow, a highly-moderated account of an evil holder of the dreaded copyright — a profiteer on the information, that Wants To Be Free[TM]! On Slashdot!
What's the world coming to? Next we'll start using terms like "theft" and "stealing" when talking about digital photographs, even though you still have your file on your computer, when I do right-click->Save Image on mine.
Well, maybe, it is Ok for you to be doing this by yourself. But the second you decide to delegate the pursuit of thieves to someone else (like PhAA, perhaps?) , then we'll denounce both you and that delegate (MafiAA!!) as "greedy" producers of "trash", which nobody would be buying anyway.
You realize that resell vs fair use invalidates most of your argument?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
...whereas before the Internet, people first paid and only then were shown the photos...?
You know what I mean. If someone is exhibiting photos in a storefront, you would be accused of theft if you took one and walked out. Moreover, photographing art in a gallery is almost always forbidden. (Exceptions are made for public domain art.)
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 definitely wouldn't want to live in a jurisdiction that would legally prohibit mere saving a picture from a web page. Are you insinuating that there is indeed such a horrible place in the world?
You're taking my words out of context. This is not that hard to understand. I have a website. I sell photos directly from the website. Yes, you can right click and save a (generally smaller, lower quality) copy of a photo I have for sale. I can't stop that and don't really try. But if you sell the photo or use it to draw eyes to a website without my permission, that is theft and I will pursue it.
Moreover, I try to make it easy to do the right thing by keeping my prices reasonable. A digital copy for personal use is typically a couple of bucks. Prints cost a little more, (you're essentially paying for the convenience of having it printed and/or framed for you) and commercial reuse costs significantly more. I allow non-profit reuse for free, if I get a photo credit. If you are the subject of a candid (event, street photo) I will always ask permission first, and I will give you a copy for free if asked.
I have incorporated other people's photos into commercial websites. I always pay for commercial use of the photo, and provide attribution if asked. I expect people to treat me as I treat them.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I did not mean to insinuate that pros deserve special treatment. I do think that pros are more likely to have the connections and knowledge to pursue the issue. On the other hand, I fully expect that somewhere there's a mom that says "oh, look, there's little Mary in the yellow bikini we bought last week. Wait, that's an ad for a Nexus 5... Henry, call the cops!" And in my opinion, Mom would have a perfect right to do so.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They understood how the law works. That is why they are so surprised right now. Infringement payments are for the little guy sharing songs or movies in order to protect corporate profit, not for the corporations that use images for profit without permisison. The little guy isn't supposed to have any recourse.
Now imagine you didn't opt in, and the plastic thingummy design/factory process/etc. was borrowed by a competitor...
I was thinking of a commodity product with little innovation involved. Maybe 'thingummy' wasn't precise enough :-P
Artificial creation of companies to escape duties or take advantage of the system is nothing new. Here, the "buddy"'s soul task is producing IP using the CAD/CAM software.
I know, that was the point. It's a massive loophole. All you've really said is 'Yes, companies have been known to exploit loopholes'.
You may be right about the specific CAD/CAM example, so I'll rephrase: your idea would be a death-blow to the producers of software used by industries which are not themselves benefited by intellectual property law. Unless you are suggesting there are no such industries, then we have a problem.
Also, what about individuals? Can a person just opt-out of copyright and download all the movies they like?
Anyway, what's the upside of all this? What advantage could it have over the current rule-of-law implementation where it applies equally, in theory, to everyone?
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.
It doesn't work so well; if you use a small image size for sample purposes, and calculate the lowest resolution that is transparent for the size and sample medium selected, and then, you watermark your image samples. You can look at the sample, but not easily reuse it for publication --- as soon as you need to push it to a new medium, and expand the size; there will be quality issues.
I prefer to throw acid in my models' faces to ensure nobody will ever copy me again.
Okay seriously: I will never ever understand why photographers deliberately degrade their work in order to prevent copying. I say this as a photographer myself. I get a lot of business by sharing freely. Look, I get that we have to make a living, but defacing your own work is hardly the best way to advertise it. Musicians don't introduce noise or random silences in the MP3s they share. Writers don't include random gibberish in the middle of their online pieces*.
How hard is it to get that when you post something online, you have decided to share it? You can have any number of motivations: You might want to get exposure and publicity; you might want to get news services to pick it up; you might want to sell it as art. The first is free. The second, as this story makes clear, is easily managed via legal, not technical, means. The third... well, it's sufficient unto the day to solicit payment for the actual poster/book/print. If someone's too chintzy to lay out a few bucks for the real thing - they weren't your customer anyway.
any more than you'd take photos of paintings in a gallery and then sell prints of art you didn't own.
Makes sense that the curators don't allow cameras in art galleries, anyways
In what world does it make sense? Does anyone actually believe that, just because I've seen a photo of Monet's Waterloo Bridge, I won't ever again go to the National Gallery in London? Hint: Seeing the photo makes me more likely to want to go, not less.
-----------
* Brett Easton Ellis notwithstanding. But he's hardly a real writer.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Musicians don't introduce noise or random silences in the MP3s they share.
No... but the free MP3s they are sharing will probably be sharing low bitrate MP3s, and they might insert an Ad/blurb in there. They don't need to post the high-BR/lossless MP3s; for buying the product, you get certain privileges.
Writers don't include random gibberish in the middle of their online pieces*.
Writers often make the 'online' version an excerpt, of what you get if you buy the full book. There may be no gibberish, but it's not the same as the FPP, either.
If you want to compare it to mathematics, knowing that economics refers to either macroeconomics or microeconomics is more like knowing what "arithmetic" is.
Since you mentioned names, I'm guessing you thought the two main branches are "Keynesian and some other guy". That's fine, nobody is competent in EVERY field.
If you didn't know the difference between arithmetic and calculus, you wouldn't argue math with mathematicians, would you? If you didn't know the difference between an Ethernet cable and power cable, you wouldn't argue about computer technology.
Just know that since you clearly haven't so much seen the cover of an economics text, YOU DON'T KNOW ECONOMICS. If you're arguing about economics and you don't know whether you're discussing microeconomics or macroeconomics, you don't know what you're talking about, simple as that.
It does not. Though my (over?)quote of you included the words "fair use", I I was concentrating on the "sell" part — and how you seek to prevent that.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The pros aren't asking for special treatment. Just for the control of reproduction (of images) rights that everyone else has.
Just because you don't use it, doesn't mean that it's not real.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"