Getty Sued For $1 Billion For Selling Publicly Donated Photos (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Online stock media library Getty Images is facing a $1 billion lawsuit from an American photographer for illegally selling copyright for thousands of photos. The Seattle-based company has been sued by documentary photographer Carol Highsmith for 'gross misuse', after it sold more than 18,000 of her photos despite having already donated them for public use. Highsmith's photos which were sold via Getty Images had been available for free via the Library of Congress. Getty has now been accused of selling unauthorized licenses of the images, not crediting the author, and for also sending threatening warnings and fines to those who had used the pictures without paying for the falsely imposed copyright.ArsTechnica has more details.

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Getty screwed up

[MAXOMENOS]

If you dig around a bit, you'll see that the artist did not make her photos public domain. She licensed them to the Library of Congress and gave a permissive license for anyone else to use them --- presumably including to sell them --- as long as users give notification that the these are the photographer's work. Nonetheless, she retains copyright. This is basically a BSD-style license. Getty is not only suing her for using her own copyrighted work, but is also not informing customers that they're her work, in violation of the license. She's suing to preserve the terms of her license.