Is this plausable??

[SoylentGreen]

Here's that link with a warning to Getty., Picscout, et al.
I thought that it was from  the Democratic Underground, but it's from DC Direct Action News.

http://dcdirectactionnews.wordpress.com/legal-notice-to-getty-images-scanning-robot-picscout-is-not-authorized-to-access-this-site/

It reads in part:

"LEGAL NOTICE TO PICSCOUT , GETTY IMAGES, PICSCOUT CLIENTS: You are prohibited from accessing this site.

1: Permission for the copyright scanning robot program known as Picscout to access this site is explicity denied.
All other robots which scan content for the purpose of any form of law enforcement, , criminal or civll, are also denied permission to access this site at any time.

2: Most of the photos here were taken by our own cameras.
They are licensed for all noncommercial reproduction EXCEPT by law enforcement,by Getty Images, or by any other corporation that has at least once filed a copyright infringment lawsuit against one or more online users of their content.
Use of any original DC Direct Action News story, photo, audio, or video recording for any propose by any entity which is a plainitiff in a copyright infringement case is hereby prohibited.

3: Getty Images is explicitly prohibited from using any image that originated in a DC Direct Action News camera for any propose.
It is up to Getty to guess which ones these are! These photos are released for not-for-profit use by the general public,their use for extortion by an external party claiming copyright against a third party downloader from THEIR site shall be treated as a copyright violation.
 
4: Notice concerning demands for damages originating from Getty Images or other  scanning robot users
 
We regard Getty Images as an organized crime entity engaged in extortion.
As such, all payment SHALL BE REFUSED if any threats of legal action are ever received from Getty Images or any other copyright holder engaging in extortion by demanding “damages” prior to sending DCMA takedown notifications.
Not only will we refuse to pay the funds you demand, we shall instead seek liquidated damages in the amount of $10,000 US per violation or our Terms of Service concerning image scanning robots."

S.G.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

ok here are the questions / comments!

Great find!! once again SG ( sans avatar) Rocks!

I wonder if we could persuade Oscar or another legal eagle to review this and suggest any changes to ensure it is legally binding?

how do we present this to GI, MF, Picscout? will presenting it on a page suffice? or would mailing it certified mail / return reciept be more effective.

Perhaps we could pool some resources ($$$) and politely ask Oscar to draft us up something. I will gladly send out certified letters on behalf of all of my clients, if I was sure this would work..

[SoylentGreen]

I like it a lot too, and I'm quite glad that I found my bookmark for it.
I thought that I'd lost it.

I think that to make it legally binding, it would have to be signed like a contract.
Or, it would have to correspond to a "law" that exists on the books.
The other way is to take it to court to "test it".  A court victory would make it legally binding between the site owner and Getty/Picscout for example.
Then, any other site owner could hold this victory over Getty/Picscout.
Those are just my opinions.  I don't know if there's anyone who'd take the time or risk to test it.

I'm doing some research to figure out if Picscout is violating any laws.  I have some ideas, but I need to pin it down a bit more.
The approach is to find something that they're doing that breaches a law or convention, and that they don't need prior notification of their action to be held liable for their act.
But, again it probably wouldn't be a "criminal statute" sort of thing, so even if there's a 'violation' it would still be up to the 'victim' to prosecute.
However, if there's something in existing laws that apply, then we could say that a "win" is plausible, even if it's never guaranteed.

S.G.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

well clearly picscout does not follow robots.txt rules and is also fudging it's user agent to look like something else, to me this is boarderline hacking, is there a "law" being broken probably not, but it would be nice to find such a thing, good luck in the search