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I will just point out that the two statements that "the photos are in the public domain" and "she never abandoned her photo copyrights" are not in opposition.
by wavefunction 10y ago
I will just point out that the two statements that "the photos are in the public domain" and "she never abandoned her photo copyrights" are not in opposition.
Orphaned works (abandoned copyright) can be subject to re-copyrighting by another party from what my laymen's understanding of copyright law is.
Instead she specifically stipulated that these photos are in the public domain and so Getty is obviously operating under bad-faith principles.
- visarga 10y agoThe problem is not that they charged money for the photos. They can do that for public domain works. The problem is that they sent C&D letters to other people who used the same work, even though they were not entitled to. But then, unfortunately, this could be filed as a simple DMCA notification error and would not entitle the author to 150,000$ in damages per work. She will receive only an apology. And this is how Getty gets to strongarm the less rich artists and only have to say "sorry" when they can't win.
- chrismcb 10y agoYes, those two statements are in direct opposition. A work in public domain has no copyright. If she kept the copyright, the works are not in public domain.
- wavefunction 10y agoAbandoning copyright is different than assigning the works to the public domain from what I know. One is an explicit act (moving works into the public domain) and the other is simply a sin of omission.