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I suspect you eventually go to jail on fraud charges. Getty can probably argue that they made a mistake when classifying the image. But this argument only work
by jopsen 7y ago
I suspect you eventually go to jail on fraud charges.
Getty can probably argue that they made a mistake when classifying the image. But this argument only works if you have rights to a lot of legitimate works.
(Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer)
- kstenerud 7y agoIt would more likely be fines, especially once you're big enough to pull strings. It wouldn't be too much trouble to add "copyright checker" code to the bots that's good enough to provide a fig leaf for your defense. Automated large-scale systems make mistakes all the time, after all. Pay the fines, do the minimum work necessary to comply with the court order, rinse and repeat, and keep your PR team on standby.
- jopsen 7y agoFair enough, maybe I should have said that in theory they could go to jail for fraud. In practice, it's unlikely that even a dedicated scam operation gets the attention of the authorities.. it rarely happens, probably because there are more serious crimes to prosecute.
- dmitriid 7y ago> I suspect you eventually go to jail on fraud charges You don't. At most you get slapped with a 1.5 million dollar fine. Getty's revenue is ~1 billion dollars. This gets written of as minor expense. In all other cases you team of lawyers gets the court to dismiss the case.
- rndgermandude 7y agoRICO their asses and send their company brass to jail.
- jopsen 7y agoUntil shown otherwise, I think it's reasonable to assume that Getty does not have an internal policy of filing bogus copyright claims. But yes, even if they do.. the authorities probably have worse criminals to pursue. So in practice you could probably get away with it for a long time.
- dmitriid 7y agoTheir internal policy is to gobble up images and then file automatic claims on them.
- hutzlibu 7y agoWhich is then problem with the law and justice system, if fraud can be a valid buisness model.