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

[iluvcapra]

Information wants to be free for me, but not for thee.

Was AFP wrong to take the images because it violated the profoundly-honored institution of copyright, which everyone on Slashdot naturally adores (heh), or because they're a rich corporations, and rich corporations are always wrong compared to "working men"?

I eagerly awate assemblerex's demand for Voltage Pictures to be compensated millions of dollars for the bittorrented distribution of The Hurt Locker. I bring this up as someone who was employed on that film, and note that that money pays my salary on the next film...

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

[Okian Warrior]

I eagerly awate assemblerex's demand for Voltage Pictures to be compensated millions of dollars for the bittorrented distribution of The Hurt Locker. I bring this up as someone who was employed on that film, and note that that money pays my salary on the next film...

You seem to be implying that we have a double standard in judging the moral position of copyright litigants.

Let me ask you something: do the "Voltage Pictures" standard contracts in any way, shape, or form conform to the common definition of Hollywood Accounting?

It's not that we always side with "the little guy" - we frequently side against small vendors making money off of illegal copying, such as Chinese illegal DVD vendors or businesses who sell open-source software.

The rule is this: we generally side against evil, in all its predatory, corrupt, and dishonourable ways.

What's your take on the "Voltage Pictures" contracts, BTW? I think people here would enjoy your views.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[gl4ss]

I think the big deal is that they put the images on Getty..

so it's like someone taking somebodys music performance from youtube and putting it on spotify and for sale on itunes... rather than someone taking that music from youtube and putting it on vimeo.

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

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]

FWIW, I haven't watched your movie, probably never will. And I consider your studio's attempt to blackmail people they suspected of piracy to be little better than thuggish banditry.

Voltage Pictures is a production company, not a studio. Kathryn Bigelow actually produced her following picture with Annapurna Pictures, which is funded by one of Larry Ellison's kids.

My actual studio is Sony Pictures. You guys are cool with Sony, right? =D

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[iluvcapra]

Can't decide if you forgot a smiley at the end or not.

My argument's quality is orthogonal to my employment.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[Okian Warrior]

What's the problem with Hollywood Accounting? Do you have any actual complaint here? The way writers are paid for work is completely regular and legal, and all people outside the business ever hear are the stories, heavily promoted, of certain individuals who thought they could get a better deal by taking their case to the press.

Hollywood accounting is essentially lying about profits so that the producers don't have to pay "percent of profit" agreements. I think the best example is Forrest Gump, about a year after release it was the third-highest-grossing movie of all time, having taken in around $661 million against a $55 million cost to produce and (at that time) still sitting at a $65 million loss.

Winston Groom [writer of "Forrest Gump"] was only made whole because he had you guys over a barrel: you couldn't make the sequel without his blessing, and he had been burned by the original movie.

Producers have a well-earned reputation as predatory, greedy, grasping, and immoral. I can remember reading occasional accounts of producer behaviour starting with the Three Stooges, with occasional first-hand and investigatory reports ever since with no change in perspective. A simple Google search exposes your history for all to see. You are widely regarded as bad people.

How is Hollywood Accounting more fair than, say, the common dot-com tactic of paying an employee with stock options and then diluting them? Or the technology company policy of paying a patent filer with a flat bonus? The difference is moral opprobrium and marketing, nothing more.

I think you meant to say "less fair".

We don't support companies that screw with employees either, we're pretty consistent about the "fairness" issue.

Re:Sweet sweet copyright justice

[Nyder]

Hollywood accounting is essentially lying about profits so that the producers don't have to pay "percent of profit" agreements.

If you can show me a writer's contract that says "percent of profit," I'll surrender my account.

The entire "Hollywood Accounting" narrative was invented by the lawyers of disgruntled writers.

Here you go:

Winston Groom's price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film's commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing.[7] That being so, he has refused to sell the screenplay rights to the novel's sequel, stating that he "cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure".

Stan Lee, co-creator of the character Spider-Man, filed a lawsuit after the producers of the movie Spider-Man (2002) did not give him a portion of the gross revenue.[8]

The estate of Jim Garrison sued Warner Bros. for their share of the profits from the movie JFK, which was based on Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins.[9]

Art Buchwald received a settlement after his lawsuit Buchwald v. Paramount over Paramount's use of Hollywood accounting. The court found Paramount's actions "unconscionable", noting that it was impossible to believe that a movie (1988's Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America) which grossed US$350 million failed to make a profit, especially since the actual production costs were less than a tenth of that. Paramount settled for an undisclosed sum, rather than have its accounting methods closely scrutinized.

The film My Big Fat Greek Wedding was considered hugely successful for an independent film, yet according to the studio, the film lost money. Accordingly, the cast (with the exception of Nia Vardalos who had a separate deal) sued the studio for their part of the profits. The original producers of the film have sued Gold Circle Films due to Hollywood accounting practices because the studio has claimed the film, which cost less than $6 million to make and made over $350 million at the box office, lost $20 million.[10]

Hollywood accounting is not limited to movies. An example is the Warner Bros. television series Babylon 5 created by J. Michael Straczynski. Straczynski, who wrote 90% of the episodes in addition to producing the show, would receive a generous cut of profits if not for Hollywood accounting.[citation needed] The series, which was profitable in each of its five seasons from 1993–1998, has garnered more than US$1 billion for Warner Bros., most recently US$500 million in DVD sales alone. But in the last profit statement given to Straczynski, Warner Bros. claimed the property was $80 million in debt. "Basically," says Straczynski, "by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits."[11]

Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, and his studio Wingnut Films, brought a lawsuit against New Line Cinema after "an audit... on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring". Jackson stated this is regarding "certain accounting practices", which may be a reference to Hollywood accounting. In response, New Line stated that their rights to a film of The Hobbit were time-limited, and since Jackson would not work with them again until the suit was settled, he would not be asked to direct The Hobbit, as had been anticipated.[12] Fifteen actors are suing New Line Cinema, claiming that they have never received their 5% of revenue from merchandise sold in relation to the movie, which contains their likeness.[13] Similarly, the Tolkien estate sued New Line, claiming that their contract entitled them to 7.5% of the gross receipts of the $6 billion hit.[14] Overall according to New Line's accounts the trilogy made "horrendous losses" and no profit at all.[15]

According to Lucasfilm, Return of the Jedi despite having earned $475 million at the box-office against a budget o

When the shoe is on the other foot...

[shameless]

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, 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.

Re:Photog

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a douche. Just so you don't have to look it up, that's short for douchebag, and I'm implying that you're only useful for cleaning vaginas.

You didn't read a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Interoperability

[tepples]

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.

Bridgeman v. Corel; damage

[tepples]

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?

Re:Bridgeman v. Corel; damage

[0123456]

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?

The camera steals its soul.

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:Why did the other companies settle?

[Theaetetus]

I would assume they concluded that settling would be less costly than fighting it. The fact that it was settled for an undisclosed amount probably suggests that the original author was asking something more reasonable then what was awarded in court.

The problem with copyright is that dissemination or distribution in and of itself is a violation so even if I swore to you that I owned the copyright and you could distribute it, you are not entirely off the hook if I was not truthful. Of course any sane court would likely keep any penalties as low as possible if you could prove that. Some juries might even toss it out because of the mens rea involved but it would require going to court and risking losing the case.

No, if I can prove you swore to me that you owned the copyright and I could distribute it, I'm entirely off the hook... Or technically I am off the hook, and you're the one who's boned.
The rule is Rule 14, which states that if I'm sued, I can bring you in as a third-party defendant if you're liable for all or part of the claim against me: I infringed the copyright, but because of your fraud, you're responsible for my actions. The best part is, if I can prove that tiny piece of it - show my contract with you, for example - I can walk away from the copyright infringement case and never have to show up in court. If "I" lose that one, then even if I owe the plaintiff a million dollars, you're 100% liable to me, so really, it's you who loses. Hence why I could take a default judgement and not care.

This also comes up in insurance proceedings. If you sue me and I'm fully covered by insurance, I'll just bring in my insurance company and let them defend the suit if they want. I don't care because, win or lose, I don't pay anything.