Messages

151

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Breaking new ground with Amicus Briefs

« on: December 24, 2011, 03:44:14 PM »

Matthew,

To further the idea please see : http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/index.php/topic,2442.0.html

Also, I think that even if the case gets settled out of court, any accepted amicus brief(s) become a permanent part of the record of the proceedings.

152

Getty Images Letter Forum / Legal Fund

« on: December 24, 2011, 03:41:10 PM »

It seems to me that there is at least on higher profile case whose outcome might affect a lot of people on this site.  One in particular that comes to mind is the HAN case recently filed.  I think that cases like this have a strong potential to result in legal precedent that will help or hurt our community out as a whole.  Of course, by "our community", I mean "innocent infringers" .  

I have no idea the quality of the defense team, nor do I have any idea of the funding available to the defendants.  I do, however, worry that dangerous precendence could be set if a defense isn't properly funded and pursued.

Happily, the Advernet case (which defaulted due to funding) worked out in favor of the ELI community.  I think it had juuuuust enough funding to get some good arguments (thanks to Oscar) in before it went to default.  What if it had went the other way and what if the judge had awarded huge statutory damages, simply because the defense was underfunded and the compelling arguments never reached the judge's ears?  How nervous would that make some of us here?

Anyway, I for one, would be willing to contribute through the ELI site, to a legal fund that would compensate Oscar to submit an amicus brief in the more important cases as donated funds allow.  In short, as I understand it, an amicus brief is a way to present legal analysis to a judge of a case that one isn't a party to.  I think it is quite common and usually done to help avoid bad precendence being set.

I should say that I really don't have any "skin" in the game any longer as the statute of limitations ran out on my alleged "infringement" some time ago.  However, I still feel strongly enough about this to donate money to the fund I mentioned if it came into existence.

Also, I want to stress that I'm not supporing this to make it easy for blatant infringers to get away with their thievery.  I merely want to see innocent infringers get a fair deal when they find themselves in this situation. I think this attitude is shared by the overwhelming majority of the participants here at the ELI forums.

153

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Hawaiian Art Network Lawsuit Collection

« on: December 24, 2011, 09:15:39 AM »

Actually, that may be good news.  Maybe this will be the venue to get that practice exposed and shut down.

Seems to me that a good strategy might be to file suit against the free wallpaper site and the uploader (John Doe) for contributory copyright infringement to compel the free wallpaper site(s) to reveal the IP of the John Doe.  Even if John Doe is using a proxy server there are ways to figure out who he is.

This will be interesting to watch.

By the way, I assume this is guy we are talking about in the following link?
http://www.hawaiianphotos.net/VKTylor.htm

154

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: New ELI Video Update for Christmas Eve 2011

« on: December 24, 2011, 08:35:56 AM »

Thanks Matt, Oscar, buddhapi, mcFilms and everyone else here for all you do.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.

155

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Hawaiian Art Network Lawsuit Collection

« on: December 24, 2011, 08:33:24 AM »

My first thought is that the photographer may not have thought this through very well.  

First he has publicly associated his name with these people.  That alone would be enough to compel me to not participate, I think.

Second, wouldn't he be opening up himself to potential counter-suits?  What if he finds himself up to his eyeballs in counter-suit(s) aimed directly at him?  If the going gets tough, will his "friends" hang around to protect him and finance his defense?

156

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty Images’ “unauthorized use fees” border on mobster-like extortion

« on: December 23, 2011, 12:35:41 PM »

Thanks for posting that.  This illustrates a very important reason why I think that it is a bad idea to use stock photo companies at all. 

157

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: bzq-109-66-7-15.red.bezeqint.net Hammering site

« on: December 20, 2011, 04:55:07 PM »

Came across this today.  I doubt it does any good, but it made me smile .

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

158

Getty Images Letter Forum / Are Copyright Holders Seeding Own Files To Find, Sue Downloaders?

« on: December 20, 2011, 10:15:23 AM »

I have always strongly suspected that companies like Getty are purposefully sloppy with their IP protection because infringement demand letters can be so lucrative.  Just a strong suspicion on my part and Ive seen no direct evidence of this.

However, there seem to be some companies (not Getty that I know of) that may be taking it to a whole new level:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090826/0033215996.shtml

http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/davenport-lyons-digiprotect-and-evil-angel-criminal-scammers/

Is the contract language in the above links a smoldering gun (or even a smoking gun) that this is indeed happening?  Is this sort of behaviour legal in the US?

Someone needs to put a stop to this.  I hope they pick on someone with the resources to do it.

159

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received a Masterfile / My web designer is stating they are not responsible

« on: December 19, 2011, 11:49:44 AM »

Thank you - My questions is also, that a contact cannot superceed a law, . . .

I would persue this question further with a lawyer (which I am not). You might try looking into some topics such as "duty of care" (there could be others), but ultimately, in your situation, I think I would likely be trying to find a lawyer to put this squarely back in the lap of the web designer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care#United_States

EDIT:  Also have a look at "Are Limitation of Liability Clauses Enforceable?" in the following link:
http://www.terrarrg.com/images/pdfs/DraftingLoL.pdf

before  you get discouraged about the part where is says limitation of liability clauses have been upheld in Ca , have a look at the caveats (especially the first and third).

Of course, as SG pointed out, if they close up shop you might not get anything from them.

Good luck.

160

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Zvulony Settlement Demand Letter by Canadian Lawyer Gil Zvulony

« on: December 13, 2011, 05:14:25 PM »

two images = "massive" infringement?  wow . . .  Would be funny if these kinds of things weren't causing so much anguish.

161

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Picscout / DMCA question

« on: December 13, 2011, 01:23:00 PM »

Lucia,

Understood.  My post was mainly in response to the thread in general where the question of whether robots.txt constitutes a copyright protection arose.  That said, I think you could still find some clues regarding the question in the original post on this thread.  The case seems to place importance on the fact that:

"Even if it the Harding firm knew that Healthcare Advocates did not give them permission to see its archived screenshots, lack of permission is not circumvention under the DMCA".  

With the "lack of permission" issue off the table, by faking the user agent aren't they are basically just requesting the information without identifying themselves and receiving it?  I can't see how that could be construed as circumvention under the DMCA.

I hope I am wrong, by the way.  I'm not saying picscout isn't breaking any laws ... i just don't think they are violating the DMCA circumvention laws.

Lettered,
Other than with some pedantic nitpicking , I don't disagree with your interpretation of what the court might be saying about robots.txt.

But the reason I was saying that I don't think this is what buddhapi started out discussing is that in his introductory comment, he bolded this from the law:

It is also a crime under US law to use any trick or false information to gain access to a computer system. Running a robot that pretends to be a user by faking its useragent is crime under US Law because it is using false information to gain access to a computer system."

Notice the bit he quotes says nothing about robots.txt. It says something about faking a user agent.

What I'm going to say next has nothing to do with legalities. It has to do with nuts and bolts of running a web site:

Nothing needs to fake a user agent to get around robots.txt.  This is because robots.txt is not a block. (In fact, the reason the court seems to recognize disobeying robots.txt isn't necessarily violating DMCA is that robots.txt is not really a block.)

Faking user agents is a way to get around a real, honest to goodness block like the kind in .htaccess on Apache.  Also: In discussions above and on other thread, people have been talking about picscout faking useragents.

So while I think a case discussing robots.txt especially as it involves the Wayback machine is interesting, I think maybe people are getting distracted by an interesting discussion of robots.txt and forgetting about the issue of faking useragents.  

162

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Picscout / DMCA question

« on: December 12, 2011, 04:53:41 PM »

Starting on page 25 of the above link I posted, the court seems to me to say that

1) ignoring robots.txt to gain access to an otherwise public web page does not violate the circumvention clauses of the DMCA
2) circumventing the wayback machine's protocol to gain access to user blocked history could constitute a violation of the circumvention clauses of the DMCA

thats the way I read it anyway.

163

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Picscout / DMCA question

« on: December 11, 2011, 05:18:58 PM »

Regarding circumvention and robots.txt and archive.org  this case addresses a lot of those issues:

http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/07D0852P.pdf

i first heard about it here:

http://lawmeme.research.yale.edu/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=1543

164

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Ask Your Questions: Answers will be in new video update

« on: June 25, 2011, 10:42:08 AM »

1) For the case where an image is taken down upon receipt of the Getty letter, and three years have subsequently passed without hearing from Getty:  Is there any plausible theory that Getty could use to still sue, or can we just consider the case closed?

2) In the case where an image had been used since 1/1/2005, discovered by Getty on 1/1/2010, taken down on 1/1/2010, and Getty sued on 1/1/2012, would actual damages be calculated as 5 years use ( entire infringing period ), 3 years use (statute of limitations), or 1 year use (because only 1 year of infringement falls within 3 years preceding filing of lawsuit)?

Thanks!

165

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Bought Template 7 years ago, Now MasterFile is coming for me

« on: June 25, 2011, 10:33:18 AM »

My understanding is that Templatemonster has been handling these issues for their clients ... at least where Getty images are involved.  I'm not sure what consequences Masterfile involvement, or a lost receipt might have, though.  In my opinion, it would be wise to have a look at the following link and read it carefully before you start incurring legal fees:

http://blog.templatemonster.com/2007/09/19/template-monster-signs-a-new-agreement/