Question About Getty Images Own Copyright Infringement Liability

[ws2001]

Bit confused about one aspect of image storage.

In Getty Images v Herzog, GI lawyer wrote "Getty Images has demonstrated, inter alia, the defendant Herzog reproduced, displayed, distributed". But a WayBack Machine history of the site has a photo of Herzog, photo of gavel (removed in 2012; owned by GI??), and no other photos. Appears the lawsuit infringing photo is not "displayed", inferring the photo is stored but not "displayed".

The GI attorney considers computer stored images, seen or not, to be an infringement.

The confusing part is -

Why are the likely millions/billions of copyrighted images ripped by the rogue bot of GI, and stored on GI systems, not subject to the same protections and legal penalties as demonstrated in the Herzog case?

Presumes the system ripped maintains system access logs; IP addresses, files accessed, time stamp, etc. And linking an IP to an individual is one matter (Prenda Law, et al.), but linking an IP address to a corporation is another matter.

Wouldn't the legal defense of an entity doing the same thing as GI, stored but not displayed, have the same legal defense?

Or is GI being legally hypocritical about copyright infringement?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

THIS: Or is GI being legally hypocritical about copyright infringement?

They like to make their own rules as they see fit...

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

This case may help, it was determined (at least in this case) that screenshots are not proof of infringement.  The way back machine is just a collection of screenshots. Don't let the name of the company fool you, this was a US case.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15389748576569562202&q=Telewizja+Polska+SA+v.+Echostar+Satellite&hl=en&as_sdt=2,5&as_vis=1

[stinger]

One other thing you need to remember here, that Robert has pointed out many times on this forum:

Getty's rogue bot operates out of Israel.  That makes the bots actions not subject to U.S. Law.  Companies like Getty use their size to play different legal systems to their advantage against the little guy.

In essence:

They like to make their own rules as they see fit...

[ws2001]

Getty's rogue bot operates out of Israel.  That makes the bots actions not subject to U.S. Law.

About that

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl100.html
"International Copyright

There is no such thing as an “international copyright” that will automatically protect an author’s writings throughout the world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country depends on the national laws of that country. However, most countries offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions that have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions. There are two principal international copyright conventions, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention) and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC)."

"Even if a work cannot be brought under an international convention, protection may be available in other countries by virtue of a bilateral agreement between the United States and other countries or under specific provision of a country’s national laws. (See Circular 38a, International Copyright Relations of the United States.)"

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf
International Copyright Relations of the United States

Israel · Bilateral May 15, 1948; Berne (Paris) Mar. 24, 1950;
UCC Geneva Sept. 16, 1955; Phonograms May 1, 1978; Bilateral
Sept. 1, 1985; WTO Apr. 21, 1995

So by Getty Images lawyer's OWN definition (not mine), Bezeq International a Getty Images company is copyright infringing.

U.S. companies, under some conditions, can be held liable for the actions of their foreign subsidiaries.  'Course the trick remains that Bezeq International a Getty Images company is in Israel, minimally requiring some legal presence in Israel, but action could be brought in the U.S. 'Course the case would be expensive.

Good news for future rogue bot infringement victims though; point all this out to the Washington State Attorney General and New York State Attorney General. Likely they don't know about the rogue bots.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

and likely they won't care...the picscout bot and picscout in general are not breaking any laws by spidering / crawling domains. Now if they breached a password protected domain, that would be a different story, but I have not seen that. I have gone so far as to "bait" server with images in a public folder and a protected folder..picscout grabbed the public image, but did not breach the private folder.. I also don't think them crawling sites and comparing images would be considered copyright infringement.

[ws2001]

and likely they won't care...the picscout bot and picscout in general are not breaking any laws by spidering / crawling domains.

I amend the earlier statement.  New York does know about crawlers.  Not necessarily the NY Attorney General.

The Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings Inc. et al., No. 12 Civ. 1087, 2013 WL 1153979

And what some crawlers do is not necessarily legal.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi
"Question: What are the "trespass to chattels" claims some companies or website owners have brought?

Answer: Some Internet companies have claimed that unauthorized use of their servers, such as unsolicited email or robot-generated hits to websites, are a "trespass" to those servers by depriving the owners of the full use of their machines. eBay won an injunction stopping Bidder's Edge from automatically spidering the eBay site to generate auction comparison listings, because the robotic crawler used eBay system resources. The caselaw is far from settled in this area, and some commentators argue that technical means to block the use are more appropriate than legal action."

eBay v. Bidder’s Edge
Intel v. Hamidi
American Airlines, Inc. v. Farechase, Inc.

Why one needs a robots.txt file.
Parker v. Yahoo!, Inc.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pJfTMfq7T-0J:www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/Web_Crawling_Ethics_preprint.doc
"5.4. Copyright
Crawlers ostensibly do something illegal: they make permanent copies of copyright material (web pages) without the owner’s permission."

The GET process is depositing data on the hard drives of the system doing the retrieval. Whether the file exists for only a nanosecond or permanently stored, according to GI representatives is irrelevant.  GI maintains it's copyright infringement.  Hypocritical though that may be, it's what they say. 

And that should be thrown at them when filing complaints with Attorney Generals, et al.  Rogue crawlers are their weapon, and any means to disarm should be deployed.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I stilll think the issue here is Picscout even though owned by Getty Images, is a completely different company operating out of Israel, they don't have to abide by US law, and robots.txt is simply a set of instructions for crawlers and spiders, and there is no law on the books that all must abide by robots.txt, clearly there are many, many crawlers, spiders that ignore this file...don't want picscout and other bad bots using your resources??? take extra measures to block them.

[Oscar Michelen]

Just because they work out of Israel does not mean they are not subject to US laws. If their actions have sufficient impact here or if they can be held to be transacting business hear they can be subject to US jurisdiction. Otherwise every US company would form an international company and then avoid EPA and other US regulations in their US operations