Messages

1

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: The Internet is a Public Place, is it not?

« on: April 17, 2011, 08:32:05 PM »

what about walking into a yard sale and buying a used record album... is the owner of the yard sale violating a copyright, or no, because the same album has already been sold, not copied, so it's not like selling a "bootleg".

what about walking into a yard sale and buying an Ansel Adams print and putting on your wall in your dental practice...

I suspect again, that it's the original sold by a retailer, where the print had been licensed, someone got a royalty, etc..

So, what happens when we take that example a step further...  We have a friend with a nice Ansel Adams print, and we have a scanner, and we scan and print a copy of the Ansel Adams print and hang it on the wall in our dental practice...

That, I presume, crosses the line to willful copyright infringement?  

The internet seems a hazier place to me...  Let's say I walk into a dentist's office and there's a photograph on the wall, no copyright, no author, the dentist got the photo from a friend years before... I say, "Hey, that's nice, that would look nice on the wall in my office", and the friend says, "Here, you can have it", and you take it off the wall, but somehow magically it stays on the wall, so there are now two, and you take it to your office and put it on the wall, and now it's on the wall in both offices...

Can you do that, theoretically, assuming magic existed?  That seems to me to be where the trouble is, the origin of the work is unknown, and you take the original with you (right click and save), and you put it somewhere to look pretty and you don't sell it, so it's there simply to adorn your office.

This needs to be addressed by the courts or legislatively.  

My understanding of music copyright is that I can purchase a CD, burn a copy for my car and keep the original in my house.  I can tape a copy for my boombox.   I can load it onto my computer and put it on my Ipod.   What can I give to my friend?

Can I loan him my Ipod? Can I give him the original CD?  If he's riding in my car, and says, "Hey, I like that music", can I loan him the car copy?  What if he never gives it back?

I realize that this is what the Kazaa file sharing suit touched on, but I don't get the sense it's been flushed out yet.

The big thing when we were kids was to share LPs and cassettes and make copies on our home stereos for our own personal use... some of which I still have, 25 years later, while the LPs may have been damaged, or sold.  Am I guilty of copyright infringement?

Historically, it seems copyright laws made much more sense prior to 1976, and the farther back you go, the more sense they make to me.

2

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Righthaven Cases...

« on: April 17, 2011, 08:16:28 PM »

They are trolls, in the worst sense, they are seeking out injuries, like throwing themselves in front moving buses, they are out looking for trouble... I understand why they are doing it, and why they have a right to do it, but we actually have no way to know if they are using their pic bot to find images on websites, find companies listing those websites, and then inform Getty to buy those websites so Getty can then retroactively file claims against the websites that have the images.

3

Getty Images Letter Forum / The Internet is a Public Place, is it not?

« on: April 17, 2011, 01:09:56 PM »

Type in the phrase, "the internet is a public place" into google and you get many hits, people saying, the internet is a public place, don't put up anything you don't want people to see, etc...

Google "The Photographer’s Right" and open the PDF file detailing photographers rights.

It makes the statement that photographers in the United States are allowed to take photographs [aka images] anywhere in a public place, with certain restrictions such as military bases, dressing rooms, bathrooms, etc..

If the internet is indeed, a "public place", then when people upload their own images of themselves, or content, does it not become part of the "public place"?    If I create a costume  and walk down the street, as a manner of individual expression, or work of art, can someone take a photo of me?  Have they violated my "copyright"?

I would argue that this topic requires some discussion and debate...  Is the internet a public place, and is such, when you put things into the public place, in a manner that leaves them unprotected (i.e. right click and save, screen shot, etc.), have you surrendered your right to privacy, copyright, etc..

In my mind, there is a difference between contracting with a photographer to take images for your advertising and then refusing to pay the photographer and using those photos in your advertising...  AND, copying an image you see on the internet, that is in public view, for your own use and distribution, providing you aren't "selling that image" or claiming authorship of the original image as your creation.

This hasn't been thought out, but one consequence of these Getty suits may be the loss of our rights in public spaces to take photos/images of what we see.  If I paint my house certain colors to make it pretty, as I have, do I then have a copyright to all images taken of my house?  I do consider it my creation.

Thoughts and dialogue welcome, so that we might progress along this line of thinking...

4

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: copyright litigation strategic opportunities

« on: April 17, 2011, 12:40:52 PM »

also try a google search on "ELIMINATING VALUE OF INFRINGEMENT: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS"

that documents makes for a good read also

5

Getty Images Letter Forum / copyright litigation strategic opportunities

« on: April 17, 2011, 12:12:04 PM »

Do a google search on the phrase "copyright litigation strategic opportunities" and click on the PDF document or quick view of the sunstein law document.

Page 25 seems particularly suited to these situations, but the entire document is interesting.

has anyone tried seeking a declaratory judgment as soon as they got the demand notice and/or threat of suit?

see See PHC, Inc. v. Pioneer Healthcare, Inc., 75 F.3d 75, 77, 79 (1st Cir. 1996) referenced

6

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Future Getty Tactic? - scam letters

« on: April 17, 2011, 11:30:21 AM »

I agree.  When my friend first received his letter, he thought it was a scam.  There are so many scams that are very clever, emails from paypal, ebay, banks, letters in the mail saying you have to renew your domain name, renew your auto warranty... there are those sweepstakes letters that prey on the elderly...  i think consumer protection activists and mail fraud issues may be at play here... maybe Getty isn't doing anything illegal, but what they are doing so looks like a scam, and as we have been told by our government and the media so many times to ignore scam emails and letters and demands or requests for money and report them to authorities, I think our responsibility is now to ignore such scams and report them to authorities.  I've even seen news media programs discussing fake cops pulling people over, and the news/police warn people not to pull over if you suspect it's not a real cop... drive to a police station i presume.  I think we have a duty to ask our government to check out these letters and their copyright claims and make sure they are real and not scams.  How do we know a tony stone image was actually copyrighted properly, and that Getty still has exclusive license with that artist.  Maybe the artist severed the relationship when Getty dropped their commission from 30 to 15% or withheld royalties.  Maybe the artist ought to be suing Getty??

7

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Righthaven Cases...

« on: April 17, 2011, 11:24:08 AM »

great, glad to help, i've been following a number of recent legal changes and this one is most interesting...  one of which is the TSA nudie scope or feel-me-up situation at the airports...  a number of constitutional and consumer protection issues there...  we are slowly losing our freedoms here in America... freedom to travel without unreasonable searches, freedom to make simple mistakes about copyright infringement, freedom to rent our homes at the beach without cities taking those rights away, freedom after freedom is being sued away or taken away, and this is just another example of how our legal system is being used to put us all in a smaller box in which to live...

yes, recent articles suggest some interesting information about righthaven's copyright contracts with the news publisher, apparently they got it entered into evidence, and suggest it would overturn all their previous rulings.  we should stay tuned, and if you guys have any pull, perhaps convince EFF they can take on Getty without creating a lot of new arguments.

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Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Maverick v. Harper and et... RIAA cases? Apply here?

« on: April 17, 2011, 11:17:52 AM »

completely agree... if you are listening to a mariah carey song you downloaded from kazaa, you know where it came from - Maria Carey...

if you find a photo on a public domain site, on someone's random site, and it's not copyrighted, and you do some searching and can't find it on pay sites, and maybe you ask the site where you found it for permission, but no one responds, or they say sure it's public domain, etc., or there's no contact information, there are so many millions of images, how can anyone know what is and what is not copyrighted, unless they simply don't use images they haven't taken.  even people who purchase images seem to get caught by Getty's scam letters, so what is safe?  make your own images?  what if they wind up on someone else's photo image site and then getty purchases that, will you then be sued by getty for using your own image?

the digital world is it's own world and new rules should come into play.  it's like taking photos at the beach, if it's in public, you can take pictures, unless someone is saying "NO, YOU DON'T HAVE PERMISSION TO TAKE MY PHOTO."  sure it's polite to ask, but how many AP photographers are going to stop and ask someone running from a burning building, can i take your photo?  

we are somewhere in between that -  taking photos in public and the music world.

9

Getty Images Letter Forum / Future Getty Tactic?

« on: April 16, 2011, 11:41:13 PM »

OpenMind Solutions, Inc., is trying to file a class action lawsuit against 2,925 supposed copyright  infringers who downloaded copyrighted adult content off the internet.  Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting it.

I wonder if Getty is planning something like this, which is why they haven't filed many lawsuits yet, maybe they are planning on filing ONE...

10

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Maverick v. Harper and et... RIAA cases? Apply here?

« on: April 16, 2011, 11:31:36 PM »

wow, i just found a follow up to the teenager case.  after the music company accepted the $200 damage award per song, her lawyers appealed and the appeals court found that the copyright notice on the CDs should have been enough notice that she shouldn't download the song from Kazaa.  The US Supreme Court denied to the hear the appeal, so she's stuck paying $750 per song awarded by he appeals court, and the ruling means people like her are not "innocent infringers".  

However, Justice Alito writes:  "(A) person who downloads a digital music file generally does not see any material object bearing a copyright notice, and accordingly, there is force to the argument that (the current law) does not apply."

11

Getty Images Letter Forum / Righthaven Cases...

« on: April 16, 2011, 11:28:18 PM »

Wow, it's not just Getty... Righthaven finds copied news articles, purchases the copyright, and then sends extortion letters and files lawsuits...  Electcronic Frontier Foundation attorneys are taking them on...  Has anyone hear spoken to EFF or been following this story?

There's some intersting articles online in the las vegas sun from august 2010, including legal arguments like this one:

Jason Wiley of the Henderson law firm Woods Erickson Whitaker & Maurice LLP argues that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found "passive" websites don't create sufficient contacts with particular states to warrant jurisdiction by those states.

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Getty Images Letter Forum / Maverick v. Harper and et... RIAA cases? Apply here?

« on: April 16, 2011, 04:43:50 PM »

Such as Electra Entertainment Group v. McDowell?

Innocent infringement.

In Maverick v. Harper, a San Antonio, Texas, a teenager admitted to copyright infringement using the Kazaa song sharing program.

Although admitting copyright infringement, she asserted an innocent infringement defense under 17 USC 504(c)(2), which could reduce the statutory damages to $200 per infringement.

The RIAA argued that defendant could not qualify for 'innocent infringer' status, since CD's of the songs sold in stores have copyright notices.

The Court disagreed, and denied the RIAA's motion for summary judgment unless the RIAA agrees to accept $200 per infringement, because she was using the file sharing program and didn't understand the images were copyrighted.

Are you using cases like these to help?

13

Getty Images Letter Forum / Lisa Willmer letter

« on: April 16, 2011, 04:03:28 PM »

I notice in the Lisa Willmer letter that she refers to reviewing the "circumstances of this particular case", and that once the offender discloses the full extent of use, it tends to me more than they assumed (which is 2-5 years).

Well, what if the website in question only obtained a domain name about a year ago, at which point the web designer began to add content, so it can be shown that usage is only about 1 year, and thus actual charges had the photo been licensed would have been less than $200, the minimum award for actual damages that is likely to be imposed for an unintentional infringement.

Would advising Getty Images of these specific "dated" particulars be to the person's advantage to discourage future harassment or suit?

It seems they assume the worst, double the charges for Pic-Scout, etc., and then demand maximum damages.  If they knew their assumption was baseless, are they less likely to be unreasonable?

Has anyone explained their usage was for less than 1 year, and has it been helpful.

14

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Digital Millenium Copyright Act Agent - Protections?

« on: April 15, 2011, 11:36:32 PM »

makes sense.  it's quite unfortunate that Getty is so unreasonable.  if their demand letter was more reasonable, it would actually encourage people to admit an honest error, pay a small fee, and perhaps become a paying customer.

instead, they are taking bully tactics, and i hope that the government takes action to address this legislatively so that individuals don't have to battle this in court.

15

Getty Images Letter Forum / Has anyone tried sending a check with a release form?

« on: April 15, 2011, 11:34:39 PM »

Something simple, like a letter saying that as have seen no evidence of a proper copyright register for this image, we admit no liability, or wrongdoing in this matter, but we have removed the image in question from our website, immediately upon receipt of your letter, and have, as a show of good faith, enclosed a check in the amount of $100 as full and final payment to resolve your demand peacefully and to ensure a speedy resolution to this matter.

By cashing this check Getty Images, Inc. agrees to release ________ from all claims resulting from any unintended copyright infringement that may have occurred through the use of the image, and agrees to the sum of $100 as full and final payment.

And then write on the check "full and final payment, release from claim" on the check.

Has anyone tried that?  I just wonder what they'd do if they actually had a check in hand, would they return it, tear it up, it would seem foolish on their part to refuse a reasonable settlement when they had it in hand, and could close the case that day, rather than continue to badger and try to negotiate. I would think they would be tempted to cash it.

Thoughts?