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Getty Images Sued Again for Trying to License Public Domain Images

292 points by ccnafr 8y ago

TimTheTinker 8y ago
This is really a job for the legislature, not the courts. We all have an intuitive sense that something about Getty's behavior is morally wrong. But what is wrong about it isn't very well-defined. Creating those legal definitions is a big part of the legislature's job.
- njharman 8y ago
  I don’t have that intuitive sense. Other than believing copyright is wrong and that is ther biz model. The legislature has already ruled. They have defined public domain. They (and everyone who knows copyright law) understands you can do anything with public domain. Including selling, licencensing. As the OA correctly state several times. Only the clickbait title implies otherwise. Fraud has also been apropriately legislated.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    > The legislature has already ruled. So? It's not like law is a "define it once and never adjust or iterate it" kind of deal. A law is not correct just because it has already been defined and applied. That would be the moral equivalent to circular reasoning, and by that logic we should still stone people for taking the Lord's name in vain and in general go eye for an eye on each other.
    - TimTheTinker 8y ago
      > in general go eye for an eye on each other Note the original “eye for eye” statute was setting a judicial penalty limit, not giving people license to brutal personal retaliation. This was important in legal history because ancient justice prior to that tended to severely over-penalize criminal violence. “Eye for eye” would have read “if a person gouges out another person’s eye, the penalty is (only) that their own eye should be gouged out” —- which would have seemed very lenient given the existing legal climate in the ancient near-east.
  - codedokode 8y ago
    Selling a work is one thing but fradulently claiming that you own the copyright for it or that nobody can use it without your license is another thing.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- peteretep 8y ago
  Isn't it just Fake Invoice Fraud? Doesn't seem to be that much trouble charging less corporate perpetrators: https://www.experian.co.uk/blogs/latest-thinking/identity-and-fraud/fake-invoice-fraud/ https://www.experian.co.uk/blogs/latest-thinking/identity-an...
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    Fake Invoice Fraud isn't a legal category, but fraud is. It's currently possible, legally, for Getty to license public domain images as long as they don't make a false written representation that the images are their own. If Getty grants some usage permissions on paper to public domain works, that may constitute legal nonsense, but it's not fraud. Note it could be argued that such a license, or the purchase arrangements alongside it, contain false implied representations constituting fraud, but it'll be next to impossible to pin them on that without targeted legislation or existing judicial precedent (which I don't think currently exists). The thing is, people sign contracts and purchase licenses every day that contain non-enforceable legal nonsense (like a non-compete clause on an employment contract in California). It's very hard to legally define legal nonsense, thus it's likely impossible to stamp out altogether. The best we can do is outlaw specific types of legal nonsense, like licenses granting permissions on public domain works.
caprese 8y ago
Getty has a model of convincing people to buy images available for free. There's no crime, or damages, in ripping people off. If Getty sues you for thinking you didn't have their license for an image in public domain, that'll be funny. But thats not currently what they are doing, and when their processes gets to that part of the funnel on occasion, their human lawyer looks at it and decides not to do anything.
- geofft 8y ago
  Why doesn't it count as fraud? It's misrepresenting the truth in the context of a business transaction for your monetary gain and their monetary loss. Is the deal that Getty doesn't know for sure that they don't own the rights, and therefore it doesn't legally count as deliberate / knowing deception? Or is it that Getty says "You can buy a license from us" but does not say "We own the copyright for this" or "We are the exclusive licensors of the copyright for this," so they're not actually lying?
  - kbsletten 8y ago
    Yeah, Getty is selling photos that are public domain. Photos in the public domain are already free to use, though some people might pay to have peace of mind that they didn't take a similar, not-public domain work by mistake or something.
    - vkou 8y ago
      There's no peace of mind, just because you paid for it. I can sell you the rights to a photo I don't own, and the original copyright holder can go after you for infringement.
      - tokyodude 8y ago
        IANAL but I'm pretty sure Getty is guaranteeing you won't get sued From their license > Warranty of Non-Infringement. For all licensed content (excluding content marked “access only”), Getty Images warrants that your use of such content in accordance with this agreement and in the form delivered by Getty Images (that is, excluding any modifications, overlays or re-focusing done by you) will not infringe on any copyrights or moral rights of the content owner/creator. https://www.gettyimages.com/eula https://www.gettyimages.com/eula Note, I have many photos CC-BY on Flickr. One company wanted to use an image I took in the Louvre and wanted me to sign a different license. I refused as their license required I indemnify them and I had no idea what the legality of that image is given it was taken inside the Louvre
anonlapwarmer 8y ago
EEVblog and CodysLab come to mind on an unrelated but annoying scam that YouTube hasn't addressed sufficiently. Shouldn't there be a class-action against YouTube for the scammy gambit of allowing random people to claim content ID of works they don't own and then attack the original creators? This scam alone threatens to kick thousands of legitimate content creators off while enriching shady corporations and outright criminals. It seems like the only way to get YT to get their act together regarding measurably improving "who owns what."
- Simple_Guy 8y ago
  EEVblog and CodysLab are scams? Why haven't i heard about this? Do you have any source?
  - ipsum2 8y ago
    Not GP but they probably mean the opposite - other people are copying EEVBlog/CodysLab videos, and then copystriking them.
    - anonlapwarmer 8y ago
      Yes... Media they've used, sometimes that they've created themselves or used that's clearly in the public domain, has been content ID'ed by others in an attempt to extort them. It's gotten to the point where on YT one basically has to have a pointless media channel to upload original music / video to content ID before using it in other videos.
  - LeonM 8y ago
    No, the OP meant it the other way around. Both channels were copyright striked multiple times by trolls. Both Cody and Dave (eevblog) did multiple videos on it explaining the situation.
    - codedokode 8y ago
      Should not the trolls sending fake copyright claims be held responsible then? This doesn't look very legal.
visarga 8y ago
Isn't it required to accompany public domain images with their original license?
- black-tea 8y ago
  Public domain isn't a licence. It means the work was authored by the US government or the copyright has expired. In either case the work is no longer subject to copyright at all.
- njharman 8y ago
  Nope. Not even maybe. The public domain is utterly free. As in free to do anything with. One reason Copyleft and Creative Commons licenses exist. And they require copyright. Because no one can control what is done with public domain. In the USA at leasr
warent 8y ago
> "CixxFive argues that it has standing to sue because it licensed some of these public domain images. But ... it's not clear how that's Getty's fault." Surely intentionally misrepresenting the images as being wholly owned and copyrighted by Getty makes it their fault. They're deceiving the customer outright even if they're trying to be subtle about it. Behaving as if Getty is totally free of responsibility from this is just playing make-believe where we all pretend that nothing ethically reprehensible is happening.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  It seems pretty clear to me that they're talking about Getty's actual legal liability here, not making a moral judgment on whether what they're doing is wrong. In fact, two paragraphs later they say- > I'm certainly sensitive to the slimy practices of Getty Images, and claiming that public domain images are available for license (at very high fees) is very slimy. But it's not at all clear that it's against the law.
egfx 8y ago
Well, at least they didn't license gif's and left our precious memes alone. Oh wait... GIF.com
btown 8y ago
https://www.lw.com/thoughtleadership/using-public-domain-content-in-new-media https://www.lw.com/thoughtleadership/using-public-domain-con... mentions an interesting and potentially applicable precedent: > Nonetheless, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dastar Corporation v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation24 greatly restricted the trademark claim of “reverse passing off”—when a person represents someone else’s work as his or her own—regarding works in the public domain, although a claim of false advertising may still be viable. Dastar took a set of video programs in the public domain, based on General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s book chronicling his European campaign in World War II, and edited them slightly, including replacing the original credits and removing references to Eisenhower’s still-copyrighted book. The owners of the film rights to the book and the expired copyright on the original video programs sued Dastar for, among other things, reverse passing off by presenting the video programs as a Dastar production.25 The Supreme Court held that Dastar’s actions did not constitute reverse passing off under federal trademark law because the video programs were in the public domain and therefore could be freely exploited by anyone. To hold otherwise would be to “create[] a species of perpetual patent and copyright, which Congress may not do.”26 The Court did, however, leave open the possibility that Dastar might be liable under other provisions of federal trademark law that prohibit false advertising, such as misrepresenting the nature or qualities of the advertised work.27 In light of the Dastar holding and the continued viability of some trademark claims, those seeking to use a public domain work should consider the prospect of liability for trademark infringement or related state unfair competition claims. (IANAL but I love this kind of stuff.)
smadge 8y ago
The problem seems to be that while it is deceptive and probably illegal to imply you have a copyright over a public domain image, the company who is suing doesn't have the "standing" to sue. Instead that is the responsibility of the FTC or an Attorney General. Although it seems unfortunate because those institutions have limited resources and/or might be captured and not willing to pursue such cases.
- paultopia 8y ago
  But this is not the case when the company suing has actually been induced by the fraud to purchase images. Then they have knock-down standing, because they have an individualized legally cognizable injury.
  - smadge 8y ago
    I don’t have any legal expertise. The article just made it seem like they wouldn’t win the case because of that reason.
    - paultopia 8y ago
      No personal criticism meant! The article is badly written to suggest the standing problem is general when it's really a problem only for plaintiffs who haven't actually lost money on the scam. (One is the many flaws with the article...)
reuters 8y ago
Does Getty deserves this? No. You should ask yourselves why companies like Getty want to make more money? Business.
massysett 8y ago
This is sleazy how? Getty has done the work of looking at images and screening them and putting them in a catalog. No more sleazy than Red Hat or Canonical selling support for software it didn’t write. If people want free public domain images, they can search for them. Only problem is, that’s work! Getty did it for you.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  This isn't true. There are sites that have public domain images and google has easy to use tools that sort images by licensing types. I make art and when I do need a reference picture, I use these tools. Most folks can do these things easily. What Getty images does is sleazy because it makes it so that some of the tools available won't show a picture. Getty is charging for it and licensing it. This is different than them doing the work - they are taking it away.
- felipelemos 8y ago
  They can make them available through a paid portal, exactly like Red Hat or Canonical does with updates. But they can't license something that they does not own. Specially when they mix those images with others that they own and which they can sue you for large sums of money if you use them without license. I can use CentOS workout pay dime to Red Hat. * typo
- ElBarto 8y ago
  The allegation is that they licensed public domain images, which is something obviously unlawful (and likely criminal if done knowingly) since they do not own the rights of a public domain image by definition. If it is indeed work to find and catalogue those images then they are allowed to charge for access to that catalogue. But a public domain image cannot be licensed.
- Taniwha 8y ago
  They are claiming copyright on the works something they don't own - even if you put something into the public domain you still can claim copyright - Getty can't go around licensing your copyright to others without your permission, much less demanding money because they claim that they own it. What they can do is resell things in the public domain, what they can't do is shake people down for licensing fees
praestigiare 8y ago
In the first listed incident, Getty sent a takedown notice over a public domain image. This is fraud, just as clearly as the scammers who call elderly people and tell them they need to pay some fake fee or bill they didn't know about. People in this thread keep claiming that because it is public domain, they can do whatever they want with it including license it, which is not true. They can certainly sell it, but a license is a legal instrument that grants usage rights, and Getty cannot grant such rights. To claim to do so is fraud.
- nl 8y ago
  People in this thread keep claiming that because it is public domain, they can do whatever they want with it including license it, which is not true. They can certainly sell it, but a license is a legal instrument that grants usage rights, and Getty cannot grant such rights. To claim to do so is fraud. Is that settled in a court of law? It isn't at all obvious to me that is the case. The linked article explicitly disagrees with that interpretation - because Getty doesn't make any claim what the license is: Getty and/or Getty US offers to let the user “Purchase a license” to a NASA photo of Saturn for $499.00 with “standard editorial rights” Techdirt makes the point: it can't sell "copyright licenses," as that is a misrepresentation over the rights that Getty Images has -- but if it wants to try to get people to pay for stuff that is otherwise available for free, that's Getty's prerogative. and that seems a reasonable interpretation. Indeed and other interpretation would imply some kind of negative copyright exists over the work (because it is restricting what you can do with it), and elsewhere in this thread it is pointed out that there is precedent for avoiding that[1]
  - _up 8y ago
    Adobe also claims that Fonts are Software. Because most Fonts wouldn't be copyrightable beyond the Name of the Font because they lack innovation. Software, on the other hand, doesn't require innovation.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      Shouldn't the letter forms in the font be copyrightable? How are those different from a (copywritable) drawing?
jrochkind1 8y ago
See also: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/694241?journalCode=adx https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/694241?jou... Understanding Copyfraud: Public Domain Images and False Claims of Copyright by Chris Needham Copyright fraud or copyfraud—when museums misrepresent or restrict rights in ways that go against public domain copyright law—continues to be a widespread practice even in the years following the 1999 Bridgeman Art Library, LTD. v. Corel Corp. court case. To help clarify this situation, the author first reviews the relevant copyright issues, then considers some of the problems that copyfraud creates in universities, publishing houses, and museums. In conclusion, he explores the ways museums, supported by their librarians and visual resources managers, have recently changed their approach to copyright and copyfraud, and the ways in which this is transforming scholarship and allowing scholars and librarians to better serve the public. [However that article IS copyrighted and paywalled at that URL. doi: 10.1086/694241 ]
ck2 8y ago
considering banks during the financial-crisis got away without even a penalty, forget prison time, for automating foreclosures on people's homes that the bank didn't actually own or weren't behind on the mortgage, I suspect this crime-via-automation will also not be punished
rjmunro 8y ago
As far as I can tell, if they took a public domain image, modified it in some way, and sold that on their site, it would be copyright them. They could sue you for using it or whatever they wanted. What would count as modified, I don't know. E.g. Maybe they put real man hours in on Photoshop to remove some artifact and to correct the color. I don't think anyone would argue they shouldn't deserve to be paid. But if all they did was crop it, resize it or even just compressing it as a JPEG they might be fine in legal terms.
eugeniub 8y ago
If the law is on Getty's side, the law should be changed. Selling public domain content should be illegal if it's a digital work, as opposed to a printed book. At the very least, it should be required that it's clearly labeled as public domain.
- ptaipale 8y ago
  Disagree a bit: selling public domain content is OK, as long as you don't mislead the customer and claim that you own the copyright. It's essential that the customer knows what he or she is buying (for instance, the actual value is in finding the relevant PD content).
  - emilfihlman 8y ago
    Nobody disagrees that you can of course ask for a delivery/handling/whatever bullshit fee. But the law should require that you mark that as such and that you must make it known that it is not a fee on the photo. Additionally it should be required that if you are providing access to photos for a fee, you need to let the buyer know it's public domain.
jordache 8y ago
I hate these guys so much. Give me back full functionality in Google image search.
paultopia 8y ago
Count me as another "stop being so dismissive of these lawsuits, there's a plausible claim here" voice. Claiming some kind of ownership right in public domain images, and hence implicitly or explicitly representing to people that if they use those images without paying they can get sued, seems like straightforward fraud. It's no different than if I set up a toll booth on a public sidewalk, with a big official-looking sign saying "I own this sidewalk, and you have to pay me a dollar to walk down it." People who reasonably believe my misrepresentations as to my ownership of the sidewalk and give me money have at least pretty plausible good old-fashioned fraud claims. The argument of the linked article, transposed to the sidewalk toll booth context, seems to roughly be "Getty didn't put up a sign saying they OWNED the sidewalk, they put up a sign saying 'License for sale to this sidewalk which we have the rights to sell licenses to' and the silly plaintiffs shouldn't have read it like a normal person to be a claim of ownership; instead they'd should have read it in the unnatural way that Getty wanted to trick them into not reading it as." Or, in tort lawyer language, as the claim that their reliance on Getty's claim of ownership wasn't justified. Well, this sounds like a jury question to me.
imhelpingu 8y ago
I had to stop releasing music under creative commons because I noticed copyright trolls were trying to claim it was there's when some tried to use it as music in their youtube videos. The whole point of releasing under creative commons is so the exact opposite thing happens.

292 points by ccnafr 8y ago

This is really a job for the legislature, not the courts. We all have an intuitive sense that something about Getty's behavior is morally wrong. But what is wrong about it isn't very well-defined. Creating those legal definitions is a big part of the legislature's job.

njharman 8y ago
I don’t have that intuitive sense. Other than believing copyright is wrong and that is ther biz model. The legislature has already ruled. They have defined public domain. They (and everyone who knows copyright law) understands you can do anything with public domain. Including selling, licencensing. As the OA correctly state several times. Only the clickbait title implies otherwise. Fraud has also been apropriately legislated.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  > The legislature has already ruled. So? It's not like law is a "define it once and never adjust or iterate it" kind of deal. A law is not correct just because it has already been defined and applied. That would be the moral equivalent to circular reasoning, and by that logic we should still stone people for taking the Lord's name in vain and in general go eye for an eye on each other.
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    > in general go eye for an eye on each other Note the original “eye for eye” statute was setting a judicial penalty limit, not giving people license to brutal personal retaliation. This was important in legal history because ancient justice prior to that tended to severely over-penalize criminal violence. “Eye for eye” would have read “if a person gouges out another person’s eye, the penalty is (only) that their own eye should be gouged out” —- which would have seemed very lenient given the existing legal climate in the ancient near-east.
- codedokode 8y ago
  Selling a work is one thing but fradulently claiming that you own the copyright for it or that nobody can use it without your license is another thing.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
peteretep 8y ago
Isn't it just Fake Invoice Fraud? Doesn't seem to be that much trouble charging less corporate perpetrators: https://www.experian.co.uk/blogs/latest-thinking/identity-and-fraud/fake-invoice-fraud/ https://www.experian.co.uk/blogs/latest-thinking/identity-an...
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  Fake Invoice Fraud isn't a legal category, but fraud is. It's currently possible, legally, for Getty to license public domain images as long as they don't make a false written representation that the images are their own. If Getty grants some usage permissions on paper to public domain works, that may constitute legal nonsense, but it's not fraud. Note it could be argued that such a license, or the purchase arrangements alongside it, contain false implied representations constituting fraud, but it'll be next to impossible to pin them on that without targeted legislation or existing judicial precedent (which I don't think currently exists). The thing is, people sign contracts and purchase licenses every day that contain non-enforceable legal nonsense (like a non-compete clause on an employment contract in California). It's very hard to legally define legal nonsense, thus it's likely impossible to stamp out altogether. The best we can do is outlaw specific types of legal nonsense, like licenses granting permissions on public domain works.

caprese 8y ago

Getty has a model of convincing people to buy images available for free. There's no crime, or damages, in ripping people off. If Getty sues you for thinking you didn't have their license for an image in public domain, that'll be funny. But thats not currently what they are doing, and when their processes gets to that part of the funnel on occasion, their human lawyer looks at it and decides not to do anything.

geofft 8y ago
Why doesn't it count as fraud? It's misrepresenting the truth in the context of a business transaction for your monetary gain and their monetary loss. Is the deal that Getty doesn't know for sure that they don't own the rights, and therefore it doesn't legally count as deliberate / knowing deception? Or is it that Getty says "You can buy a license from us" but does not say "We own the copyright for this" or "We are the exclusive licensors of the copyright for this," so they're not actually lying?
- kbsletten 8y ago
  Yeah, Getty is selling photos that are public domain. Photos in the public domain are already free to use, though some people might pay to have peace of mind that they didn't take a similar, not-public domain work by mistake or something.
  - vkou 8y ago
    There's no peace of mind, just because you paid for it. I can sell you the rights to a photo I don't own, and the original copyright holder can go after you for infringement.
    - tokyodude 8y ago
      IANAL but I'm pretty sure Getty is guaranteeing you won't get sued From their license > Warranty of Non-Infringement. For all licensed content (excluding content marked “access only”), Getty Images warrants that your use of such content in accordance with this agreement and in the form delivered by Getty Images (that is, excluding any modifications, overlays or re-focusing done by you) will not infringe on any copyrights or moral rights of the content owner/creator. https://www.gettyimages.com/eula https://www.gettyimages.com/eula Note, I have many photos CC-BY on Flickr. One company wanted to use an image I took in the Louvre and wanted me to sign a different license. I refused as their license required I indemnify them and I had no idea what the legality of that image is given it was taken inside the Louvre

anonlapwarmer 8y ago

EEVblog and CodysLab come to mind on an unrelated but annoying scam that YouTube hasn't addressed sufficiently. Shouldn't there be a class-action against YouTube for the scammy gambit of allowing random people to claim content ID of works they don't own and then attack the original creators? This scam alone threatens to kick thousands of legitimate content creators off while enriching shady corporations and outright criminals. It seems like the only way to get YT to get their act together regarding measurably improving "who owns what."

Simple_Guy 8y ago
EEVblog and CodysLab are scams? Why haven't i heard about this? Do you have any source?
- ipsum2 8y ago
  Not GP but they probably mean the opposite - other people are copying EEVBlog/CodysLab videos, and then copystriking them.
  - anonlapwarmer 8y ago
    Yes... Media they've used, sometimes that they've created themselves or used that's clearly in the public domain, has been content ID'ed by others in an attempt to extort them. It's gotten to the point where on YT one basically has to have a pointless media channel to upload original music / video to content ID before using it in other videos.
- LeonM 8y ago
  No, the OP meant it the other way around. Both channels were copyright striked multiple times by trolls. Both Cody and Dave (eevblog) did multiple videos on it explaining the situation.
  - codedokode 8y ago
    Should not the trolls sending fake copyright claims be held responsible then? This doesn't look very legal.

visarga 8y ago

Isn't it required to accompany public domain images with their original license?

black-tea 8y ago
Public domain isn't a licence. It means the work was authored by the US government or the copyright has expired. In either case the work is no longer subject to copyright at all.
njharman 8y ago
Nope. Not even maybe. The public domain is utterly free. As in free to do anything with. One reason Copyleft and Creative Commons licenses exist. And they require copyright. Because no one can control what is done with public domain. In the USA at leasr

warent 8y ago

> "CixxFive argues that it has standing to sue because it licensed some of these public domain images. But ... it's not clear how that's Getty's fault." Surely intentionally misrepresenting the images as being wholly owned and copyrighted by Getty makes it their fault. They're deceiving the customer outright even if they're trying to be subtle about it. Behaving as if Getty is totally free of responsibility from this is just playing make-believe where we all pretend that nothing ethically reprehensible is happening.

brianpgordon 8y ago
It seems pretty clear to me that they're talking about Getty's actual legal liability here, not making a moral judgment on whether what they're doing is wrong. In fact, two paragraphs later they say- > I'm certainly sensitive to the slimy practices of Getty Images, and claiming that public domain images are available for license (at very high fees) is very slimy. But it's not at all clear that it's against the law.

egfx 8y ago

Well, at least they didn't license gif's and left our precious memes alone. Oh wait... GIF.com

btown 8y ago

https://www.lw.com/thoughtleadership/using-public-domain-content-in-new-media https://www.lw.com/thoughtleadership/using-public-domain-con... mentions an interesting and potentially applicable precedent: > Nonetheless, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dastar Corporation v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation24 greatly restricted the trademark claim of “reverse passing off”—when a person represents someone else’s work as his or her own—regarding works in the public domain, although a claim of false advertising may still be viable. Dastar took a set of video programs in the public domain, based on General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s book chronicling his European campaign in World War II, and edited them slightly, including replacing the original credits and removing references to Eisenhower’s still-copyrighted book. The owners of the film rights to the book and the expired copyright on the original video programs sued Dastar for, among other things, reverse passing off by presenting the video programs as a Dastar production.25 The Supreme Court held that Dastar’s actions did not constitute reverse passing off under federal trademark law because the video programs were in the public domain and therefore could be freely exploited by anyone. To hold otherwise would be to “create[] a species of perpetual patent and copyright, which Congress may not do.”26 The Court did, however, leave open the possibility that Dastar might be liable under other provisions of federal trademark law that prohibit false advertising, such as misrepresenting the nature or qualities of the advertised work.27 In light of the Dastar holding and the continued viability of some trademark claims, those seeking to use a public domain work should consider the prospect of liability for trademark infringement or related state unfair competition claims. (IANAL but I love this kind of stuff.)

smadge 8y ago

The problem seems to be that while it is deceptive and probably illegal to imply you have a copyright over a public domain image, the company who is suing doesn't have the "standing" to sue. Instead that is the responsibility of the FTC or an Attorney General. Although it seems unfortunate because those institutions have limited resources and/or might be captured and not willing to pursue such cases.

paultopia 8y ago
But this is not the case when the company suing has actually been induced by the fraud to purchase images. Then they have knock-down standing, because they have an individualized legally cognizable injury.
- smadge 8y ago
  I don’t have any legal expertise. The article just made it seem like they wouldn’t win the case because of that reason.
  - paultopia 8y ago
    No personal criticism meant! The article is badly written to suggest the standing problem is general when it's really a problem only for plaintiffs who haven't actually lost money on the scam. (One is the many flaws with the article...)

reuters 8y ago

Does Getty deserves this? No. You should ask yourselves why companies like Getty want to make more money? Business.

massysett 8y ago

This is sleazy how? Getty has done the work of looking at images and screening them and putting them in a catalog. No more sleazy than Red Hat or Canonical selling support for software it didn’t write. If people want free public domain images, they can search for them. Only problem is, that’s work! Getty did it for you.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
This isn't true. There are sites that have public domain images and google has easy to use tools that sort images by licensing types. I make art and when I do need a reference picture, I use these tools. Most folks can do these things easily. What Getty images does is sleazy because it makes it so that some of the tools available won't show a picture. Getty is charging for it and licensing it. This is different than them doing the work - they are taking it away.
felipelemos 8y ago
They can make them available through a paid portal, exactly like Red Hat or Canonical does with updates. But they can't license something that they does not own. Specially when they mix those images with others that they own and which they can sue you for large sums of money if you use them without license. I can use CentOS workout pay dime to Red Hat. * typo
ElBarto 8y ago
The allegation is that they licensed public domain images, which is something obviously unlawful (and likely criminal if done knowingly) since they do not own the rights of a public domain image by definition. If it is indeed work to find and catalogue those images then they are allowed to charge for access to that catalogue. But a public domain image cannot be licensed.
Taniwha 8y ago
They are claiming copyright on the works something they don't own - even if you put something into the public domain you still can claim copyright - Getty can't go around licensing your copyright to others without your permission, much less demanding money because they claim that they own it. What they can do is resell things in the public domain, what they can't do is shake people down for licensing fees

praestigiare 8y ago

In the first listed incident, Getty sent a takedown notice over a public domain image. This is fraud, just as clearly as the scammers who call elderly people and tell them they need to pay some fake fee or bill they didn't know about. People in this thread keep claiming that because it is public domain, they can do whatever they want with it including license it, which is not true. They can certainly sell it, but a license is a legal instrument that grants usage rights, and Getty cannot grant such rights. To claim to do so is fraud.

nl 8y ago
People in this thread keep claiming that because it is public domain, they can do whatever they want with it including license it, which is not true. They can certainly sell it, but a license is a legal instrument that grants usage rights, and Getty cannot grant such rights. To claim to do so is fraud. Is that settled in a court of law? It isn't at all obvious to me that is the case. The linked article explicitly disagrees with that interpretation - because Getty doesn't make any claim what the license is: Getty and/or Getty US offers to let the user “Purchase a license” to a NASA photo of Saturn for $499.00 with “standard editorial rights” Techdirt makes the point: it can't sell "copyright licenses," as that is a misrepresentation over the rights that Getty Images has -- but if it wants to try to get people to pay for stuff that is otherwise available for free, that's Getty's prerogative. and that seems a reasonable interpretation. Indeed and other interpretation would imply some kind of negative copyright exists over the work (because it is restricting what you can do with it), and elsewhere in this thread it is pointed out that there is precedent for avoiding that[1]
- _up 8y ago
  Adobe also claims that Fonts are Software. Because most Fonts wouldn't be copyrightable beyond the Name of the Font because they lack innovation. Software, on the other hand, doesn't require innovation.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Shouldn't the letter forms in the font be copyrightable? How are those different from a (copywritable) drawing?

jrochkind1 8y ago

See also: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/694241?journalCode=adx https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/694241?jou... Understanding Copyfraud: Public Domain Images and False Claims of Copyright by Chris Needham Copyright fraud or copyfraud—when museums misrepresent or restrict rights in ways that go against public domain copyright law—continues to be a widespread practice even in the years following the 1999 Bridgeman Art Library, LTD. v. Corel Corp. court case. To help clarify this situation, the author first reviews the relevant copyright issues, then considers some of the problems that copyfraud creates in universities, publishing houses, and museums. In conclusion, he explores the ways museums, supported by their librarians and visual resources managers, have recently changed their approach to copyright and copyfraud, and the ways in which this is transforming scholarship and allowing scholars and librarians to better serve the public. [However that article IS copyrighted and paywalled at that URL. doi: 10.1086/694241 ]

ck2 8y ago

considering banks during the financial-crisis got away without even a penalty, forget prison time, for automating foreclosures on people's homes that the bank didn't actually own or weren't behind on the mortgage, I suspect this crime-via-automation will also not be punished

rjmunro 8y ago

As far as I can tell, if they took a public domain image, modified it in some way, and sold that on their site, it would be copyright them. They could sue you for using it or whatever they wanted. What would count as modified, I don't know. E.g. Maybe they put real man hours in on Photoshop to remove some artifact and to correct the color. I don't think anyone would argue they shouldn't deserve to be paid. But if all they did was crop it, resize it or even just compressing it as a JPEG they might be fine in legal terms.

eugeniub 8y ago

If the law is on Getty's side, the law should be changed. Selling public domain content should be illegal if it's a digital work, as opposed to a printed book. At the very least, it should be required that it's clearly labeled as public domain.

ptaipale 8y ago
Disagree a bit: selling public domain content is OK, as long as you don't mislead the customer and claim that you own the copyright. It's essential that the customer knows what he or she is buying (for instance, the actual value is in finding the relevant PD content).
- emilfihlman 8y ago
  Nobody disagrees that you can of course ask for a delivery/handling/whatever bullshit fee. But the law should require that you mark that as such and that you must make it known that it is not a fee on the photo. Additionally it should be required that if you are providing access to photos for a fee, you need to let the buyer know it's public domain.

jordache 8y ago

I hate these guys so much. Give me back full functionality in Google image search.

paultopia 8y ago

Count me as another "stop being so dismissive of these lawsuits, there's a plausible claim here" voice. Claiming some kind of ownership right in public domain images, and hence implicitly or explicitly representing to people that if they use those images without paying they can get sued, seems like straightforward fraud. It's no different than if I set up a toll booth on a public sidewalk, with a big official-looking sign saying "I own this sidewalk, and you have to pay me a dollar to walk down it." People who reasonably believe my misrepresentations as to my ownership of the sidewalk and give me money have at least pretty plausible good old-fashioned fraud claims. The argument of the linked article, transposed to the sidewalk toll booth context, seems to roughly be "Getty didn't put up a sign saying they OWNED the sidewalk, they put up a sign saying 'License for sale to this sidewalk which we have the rights to sell licenses to' and the silly plaintiffs shouldn't have read it like a normal person to be a claim of ownership; instead they'd should have read it in the unnatural way that Getty wanted to trick them into not reading it as." Or, in tort lawyer language, as the claim that their reliance on Getty's claim of ownership wasn't justified. Well, this sounds like a jury question to me.

imhelpingu 8y ago

I had to stop releasing music under creative commons because I noticed copyright trolls were trying to claim it was there's when some tried to use it as music in their youtube videos. The whole point of releasing under creative commons is so the exact opposite thing happens.