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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.
Glad to see a copyright troll getting what it deserves.
I've had photos stolen in this way by "journalists", who completely strip attribution. I don't really mind because I'm just a hobbyist and would rather people enjoy the images, but this is quite damaging to the profession - which, I'm sorry to say, is fairly noble and still employs a lot of people.
Glad to see some manipulative corporate asshats get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Ironically the photographer found out when LCS threatened her with copyright infringement unless she paid $120 after she used one of her own photos. Getty does not acknowledge their relationship with LCS however LCS uses the same address as Getty's corporate office. I would suspect LCS is their enforcement subsidiary so that they don't get negative press.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Grow the fuck up you asshole. She's in her fucking 70's, donated 18k photos for public use and Getty is stealing them, charging for their use.
If you had half a fucking brain and were able to read you may not sound like suck an anal conservative closeted sex freak.
Fuckin old smelly sysadmin who never bathes.
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.
Finding God in a Dog
Please do not feed the ACs. They will only multiply.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That is for 18,000 pictures. That comes out to $55,555.56 per picture. For willful infringement that can be up to $150,000 per infringement.
Sounds like she is giving them a discount!
Look up public domain images.
Pick some you like.
Use them.
Get threatening letters from Getty for using them.
How the FUCK does that not hurt the average person who just wanted to use a few free images?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
There are roughly 18,000 pictures. 1,000,000,000 / 18,000 = 55555,55.
A bit of rounding suggests they're being sued for 50,000 per image.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
As you feed the AC??
As someone who has been on the wrong end of a letter from Getty's lawyers concerning a set of images which were bought (on a CD) with the impression that they were already properly licensed, I hope she wins every fucking penny.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
How many times have they tried to collect $120 on 18,000 images? Have to make it hurt to get Getty images to change practices.
151. GettyÃââs violations of 17 U.S.C. ÃÂ 1202 entitle Ms. Highsmith to recover, among
other things, and if she so elects as provided in 17 U.S.C. à1203(c)(3)(B), ÃâÅ"an award of
statutory damages for each violation of section 1202 in the sum of not less than $2,500 or more
than $25,000.ÃâÂ
152. When Getty is found to have committed one violation of 17 U.S.C. ÃÂ 1202 for
each of the 18,755 results of a search for ÃâÅ"Carol M. HighsmithÃâ on GettyÃââs website, Ms.
Highsmith would be entitled to recover, among other things, and if she so elects, aggregate
statutory damages against Getty of not less than forty-six million, eight hundred eighty-seven
thousand five hundred dollars ($46,887,500) and not more than four hundred sixty-eight
million, eight hundred seventy-five thousand dollars ($468,875,000).
153. Additionally, because Getty has already had a final judgment entered against it in
the past three years in the Morel v. Getty case, the Court may treble the statutory damages in
this case.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
I always thought the purpose of Stock media was a way to provide pictures/music/video to the public for them to use for free. Is that not their purpose?
Has historically little to do with the artists. We have trials recorded from a couple hundred years ago where companies buying copyrights (often artists were required to transfer ownership just to publish a book) wanted extended duration for Copyright and increases in penalties. Meanwhile, the artists giving up the copyright were left broke and their families received nothing from their works.
IMHO a long ago fix would have been to remove the ability of Copyright ownership by a company and make them to people only. Larger productions can have multiple owners.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The previous final judgement & treble damages is really going to fuck Getty.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I would bet she's giving them more of a discount that you're suggesting, I bet she's TAKEN 18k images, Getty has probably sold the images tens of thousands of times at the very least. Assuming that they only sold about half of the images only 100 times each that is almost a million infringements. That is only $1k per infringement and I'm imagining that that those are extremely conservative numbers. I hope she does take them to the cleaners, this kind of flagrant abuse of patent/copyright needs to be nuked from orbit. Legal action on copyright/patent infringement should only be taken when the party is sure they own the patent and someone is blatantly violating it, not on a whim against anyone who is possibly infringing in any possible way.
The music industry set the bar at $22,500 per violation ($675,000 for 30 works) for an individual violating copyright without a profit motive. $1 billion for 18,000 works is only $55,555 per violation, which is relative to the Tenenbaum case is not unreasonable when you consider this is commercial copyright violation. Her lawyers are actually being nice by "only" asking for $1 billion. Copyright law allows her to sue for up to $150,000 per violation, which would be a cool $2.7 billion.
In other words, if she gets less than $22,500 * 18,000 = $405 million out of this, there's been a gross miscarriage of justice either in her case or the Tenenbaum cause. Unlike filesharing, what Getty Images did is precisely the sort of thing copyright law was made to prohibit - profiting off the work of others.
Nope she is suing for 400 Million, a previous case allows for treble damages because Getty has a history of pulling this crap.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
F***ing millennial snowflakes getting their panties in a wad because someone else does something they don't like that doesn't hurt them. It must be a form of bullying. Sue! Sue! Sue! Whine! Whine! Whine! Sue! Sue! Sue!
Did you even read the original post and source material? Getty attempted to extract compensation from the original creator, and legal owner, of the work. They also charged others for use of the work without any legal right to do so or any thought of royalty payment to the owner of the work. Its got nothing to do with millenials.
Go try and sell copies of any Hollywood movie on a commercial scale without permission. You'll be headed for jail. The only difference here is it isn't a billion dollar corporation it's a little old lady. I guess they don't count and they don't have rights in your view.
Finally, take your foul mouthed, brain-dead commentary elsewhere, this isn't Twitter, though you are a twit, This is one of the few message forums where there is still some reasonable, intelligent discussion!
Getty now sells NASA on-orbit and other spaceflight images. These images are available through NASA, already bought and paid for with tax dollars. How Getty sells any of them at lower res than NASA supplies for $500+ is beyond comprehension.
Very apropos for her - she seems to have more testicular fortitude than most lawyers.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I am not sure she has standing anymore.
The idea we see here, that she licensed her work to the LoC, does not seem to be accurate. According to the LoC it seems that she has relinquished her rights and intentionally placed her works in the public domain. This would mean that the works can be used for any purpose, commercial or private, without her having any say. This does not excuse the false copyright claim but it would also remove any standing she would have had.
From the LoC site.
"Publication and other forms of distribution: Ms. Highsmith has stipulated that her photographs are in the public domain. (See P&P Collection Files.) Photographs of sculpture or other works of art may be restricted by the copyright of the artist."
my source:
https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/r...
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The amount will, of course, be determined during discovery when Getty is forced to reveal the number of times they actually sold a license for each of her images. The three-times-$400M amount bandied about is assuming maximum value on each image, and one violation per image. That's a place to start, and gives a scale for the potentially massive size a judgement could take, but is unlikely to be found to be accurate in the end.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The technicalities of her grant of rights requires attribution, and do not give any right to sub-license the works. They are well and truly screwed in this case. Even if they claim that they were merely acting as an agent for someone else who submitted the pics to them, they failed to do proper due diligence to ensure that whoever that person was actually had the rights to begin with.
And this sure appears to be a case brought by someone with legitimate standing who wants to have very severe punishment imposed, and is one where the evidence is public and incontrovertible.
Disney have been doing this for years with public domain and other content and getting away with it using their army of lawyers crush their opponents. Their stolen works, which will get them suing you including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stephenson, Winnie the Poo and even European fairy tales that are hundred of years old.
Anyone who gets the, ahem, pleasure of browsing at -1 consistently know this troll has been posting the same crap in nearly every article's comment section for like a week now. It's nothing against this particular article, just lowest-common-denominator trolling on the level of links to goatse, etc. Don't feed it.
I get away without having to deal with all this hassle by being such a shit photographer that nobody tries to sell my photos.
The amount will, of course, be determined during discovery when Getty is forced to reveal the number of times they actually sold a license for each of her images. The three-times-$400M amount bandied about is assuming maximum value on each image, and one violation per image. That's a place to start, and gives a scale for the potentially massive size a judgement could take, but is unlikely to be found to be accurate in the end.
The actual value is irrelevant when calculating the statutory damages. This is why Jammie Thomas-Rasset who got sued and lost for pirating 24 songs owes $1.92 million. (Which will never get paid.) The quoted $468 million is the ceiling for damages provided for by law, regardless of real damages, without factoring in willful infringement, as in the Thomas-Rasset case. Using the Thomas-Rasset award for willful infringement as the benchmark (which a judge would consider perfectly reasonable), the damages per violation is $80,000 on each image, out of a possible $150,000, times the number of violations per image. $1.5 billion is the lower bound, by law and precedent. The Thomas-Rasset case was upheld on appeal, so it establishes binding precedent for its federal district, and persuasive precedent everywhere else. Discovery will only make that go up.
Undoubtedly Getty Images will refuse to pay. I suspect in order to actually get the damages, this woman will have to pull the stunt that Warren and Maureen Nyerges did to Bank of America: show up at their offices with two sheriff's deputies and a moving van and start confiscating their furniture.
the damages per violation is $80,000 on each image, out of a possible $150,000, times the number of violations per image.
Exactly my point. They don't know yet how many violations per image. The document quoted assumes exactly one violation per image. That is unlikely to be true. It is a justifiable inaccuracy to assume one violation per image as a starting point, but until discovery is complete, the figure is not accurately known. It may be substantially higher, it may be substantially lower.
My understanding is that Getty's offering of licensing is not in and of itself illegal with regard to this case, but the selling of licenses, that is taking money from a licensee under false pretense, is the issue. We don't know how many such licenses were actually sold, yet. Given the vast number of images, my bet is that the total number of licenses sold is going to be substantially below 1 per image on average. I also bet that Getty is busy calculating the actual number.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I truly dislike Getty due to the fact that they use an ENORMOUS number of public domain images, and try to pass themselves off as having ownership rights. It is selfish and disgusting. And there should be a way to punish entities who do this. (You might be surprised how many places do this, including taxpayer funded museums here in the USA...)
However, the Library of Congress page of "Carol M. Highsmith - Rights and Restrictions Information" at:
https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/r...
States:
"Carol M. Highsmith's photographs are in the public domain."
The article that appears on PDNPULSE:
http://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/...
"Highsmith says she never abandoned her copyrights to the images. She says the Library of Congress had agreed to notify users of the images that she is the author, and that users must credit her."
If the images are public domain, she did not retain the right to enforce accreditation.
What she is describing would be equivalent to a Creative Commons Attribution License.
http://opendefinition.org/lice...
Part of the reason for a cc-by license is to stop greedy folks from reselling and trying to "own" what would otherwise be public domain works. Of course, those of us who work at organizing, editing and adding our own works to the public domain on sites such as my wpclipart.com, cannot touch anything with a cc-by license.
What would be much better is if there was a legal mechanism to punish people for falsely claiming rights/ownership of images.
Without it, greedy companies/entities are continually narrowing what is available in the public domain.
Oh those "IP Pirates" are really making it hard for the mega-corps to make a decent living...
Wait, this is a mega-corp pirating from an individual?
To all slashdotters: Torrent on!
A Proper Token of Atonement for all the myriad sins the copyright abuser industry engages in would be Bill Gates issuing a public apology and then donating all of the photo stock of Getty Images to the Library of Congress, including all rights pertaining thereto. It would show that even fatcats can be magnanimous. Bwahahaha . . .
I can sell F/OS software. The licenses allow me to do so, and I believe the ability to sell is considered important both by the FSF and the OSI. I don't have to compensate anyone.
Of course, I can't remove attribution. If I do, then I've violated the license and am selling copyrighted works without a license, and the MAFIAA has made sure you can send legions of avenging angels/devils/whatever to scourge the earth and sow salt where once I stood. At least if I'm in the US. I also shouldn't legally threaten people for having their independently obtained versions of the software, and I don't know how bad that is. If I send a DMCA takedown notice, I'm committing perjury.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If I remember the law correctly, the statutory amount is based on number of copyrighted works,not the number of violations. In that case, counting one violation per image is correct.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes