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China's Largest Image Provider Suspends Site After Falsely Claiming Copyright On 'Black Hole' Photo (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
China's largest stock images provider, Visual China Group, shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China's national flag. The company, which partners with U.S. photo agency Getty Images, said in a post on its official Weibo account the incident revealed its weak management and that it was cooperating with authorities investigating the matter. Shares in the company slumped by the maximum 10 percent allowed. The topic "Visual China apologises" was among the most-read items on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform on Friday, with over 250 million views...
The country's leaders have pledged to do more to protect intellectual property rights amid complaints by the United States and other key trading partners about the theft of such assets. Elliot Papageorgiou, the Shanghai-based head of the IP practice at law firm Clyde & Co., said Visual China's use of the black hole image was embarrassing due to the photo's high profile. "It comes at an inconvenient time because China is trying hard to get recognition for some positive steps it is taking to protect intellectual property," he said.
The company had claimed to have received authorization for using the photo -- though not for commercial purposes -- from the European Southern Observatory. But today the government-owned China Daily newspaper notes that "The European Southern Observatory, responding to questions from the National Business Daily in an email, said Visual China never contacted it for any purpose regarding the image. It said Visual China did not need to ask for authorization to reproduce the image provided the credit was clear and visible, but 'the behavior of using the so-called authorization as a copyright to sell the image in China and profit from it is illegal...'"
"The official accounts of many large companies, including Baidu, Phoenix News Media, major retailer Suning and Qihoo 360, an internet security company, also left comments about having found their logos on Visual China with a copyright claim."
The country's leaders have pledged to do more to protect intellectual property rights amid complaints by the United States and other key trading partners about the theft of such assets. Elliot Papageorgiou, the Shanghai-based head of the IP practice at law firm Clyde & Co., said Visual China's use of the black hole image was embarrassing due to the photo's high profile. "It comes at an inconvenient time because China is trying hard to get recognition for some positive steps it is taking to protect intellectual property," he said.
The company had claimed to have received authorization for using the photo -- though not for commercial purposes -- from the European Southern Observatory. But today the government-owned China Daily newspaper notes that "The European Southern Observatory, responding to questions from the National Business Daily in an email, said Visual China never contacted it for any purpose regarding the image. It said Visual China did not need to ask for authorization to reproduce the image provided the credit was clear and visible, but 'the behavior of using the so-called authorization as a copyright to sell the image in China and profit from it is illegal...'"
"The official accounts of many large companies, including Baidu, Phoenix News Media, major retailer Suning and Qihoo 360, an internet security company, also left comments about having found their logos on Visual China with a copyright claim."
(C) 2019 me. All rights reserved.
Stock photo sites have their uses, but I can't help but get the vibe that they absolutely need some form of control placed upon them - especially with some of the shit Getty et-all does.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
https://slashdot.org/story/19/04/12/1820250/chinas-largest-stock-photo-provider-attracts-fire-over-use-of-black-hole-image
The horse is still warm, quit beating it.
This is a long-standing flaw in copyright law (and related laws like the DMCA). The law outlines penalties for violating copyright, but none for overreaching copyright claims. For a protective law to work, there has to be penalties for abusing that protection. You can call the police for protection if your house is being burglarized. But if you call them too often when there's no burglar, they'll charge you with filing a false police report to make you stop.
I, for one, am utterly shocked that a Getty associated company would be up to something rampantly sleazy. The fact that a Chinese outfit has started to move away from just ignoring copyright in favor of attempting to abuse it is incrementally more novel, though also not terribly surprising.
It's funny how the people who attempt to outright seize control of the creative works of others are always so enthusiastic about insisting that the ones who make clandestine copies but don't even try to dispute ownership are the 'pirates'.
I read that the photo on the Chinese site is simply a picture of Maxine Waters!
While filthy Slashdot bends over backwards to find stories that DEMONISE China, Russia, Syria and Iran, it runs a yellow journalism 'outrage' attack that assumes you sheeple will not know how many times vile filthy media organisations in the USA have claimed 'ownership' of IP they did not own.
Almost every massive American, British and European photot 'archive' for profit organisation claims 'ownership' of massive numbers of photos they do not own- and very rarely get caught out do to the obsucity of most of the images. But they do get caught out, as simply Google searches will prove.
The owners of Slashdot do not care- what they do care about is 'China' and some negative slander in the same sentence.
Slashdot is part of a fabian/neo-liberal warmongering collective that pushes daily messages to demonise the 'other'. It doesn't matter what form the slander takes, so long as each day something negative is posted about the target nations.
The anti-trump/pro-trump NOISE that appears in these forums is to distract the dumb b-eta sheeple from the fact that Trump and Clinton are 100% on the same side- and both are determined to spread Saudi Arabia's wahhabi control of ever major muslim population on our planet. This despite the fact that the depraved philosophy of the wahhabis, which is fully aligned with the z-ionists, is as anti-SJW as you can get. Buit nobody accused you b-eta sheeple of being smart- just VERY easy to manipulate.
Who knew Communists were such Capitalists. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
At least with this breaking, I noticed that VCG had purchased 500px. All my best pics on a site they own, that'll go well!
So deleted the 500px account, and I was going to look through theirs to see if anything on mine was was out there...
Lets change the name and redefine the word gravity. It'd be a shame if Einstein didn't get credit for other people's work.
... Cold War feelings, all over again!
It is terrible, that they were offering up a public domain image for a fee. Where is the firing squad? (Eye roll)
Because if âoeproperty is theftâ then clearly their theft makes it their property.
Partners with Getty. Now I understand. They just following Getty's lead.
They just take take take and never ever get permission.
They make all the clone products, unlicensed and in bad quality.
Its time to stop this illegal multi million dollar industry.
Considering that 'China' is effectively synonymous with 'IP theft' of all kinds, from hand bags to industrial equipment, I can say that I am not even remotely surprised by this photo debacle, and if China really is taking positive steps, it's completely unnoticeable because of the great big hole they dug themselves into.
I honestly can't tell if this is parody or serious. I suspect serious.