Messages

1

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: damages

« on: November 25, 2008, 10:50:13 AM »

Oscar, thanks a lot for answering my questions.

I think that it is clear that all of us respect the work of others, and we do agree that that work has to be payed. Also, it is clear that the act of creating a work, gives the copyright to the author.
But actually, we didn't know that images found on different 'free images stocks' were not free.
That is why I wish to understand what would be the FMV for those images that I put on my customer's site. I decided to talk to a lawyer and to send a kind of settlement proposal, but with a FMV price, which shoult be one year licence for each photo. Do you think that is is fair enough?
Of cours, images are not on the site anymore and I blocked the access to the Wayback machine.
By the way, do Wayback machine really provides the requested snapshots?

2

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: damages

« on: November 24, 2008, 07:22:03 AM »

I am trying to understand the legal side:
If one person put online the piece of music in mp3, then let people download it, it will cause the dammage - the people won't by the CD, and yet will be able to listen it.
When we talk about photos, imagine the company that sells those stolen Getty images - that company X would earn money, and Getty will also loose customers that will by rather from X than from Getty.
In those cases, the damages are clear and obvious.

But, in the case of images that are used to illustrate a web page that is not e-commerce, that doesn't sell information, the image that doesn't help the site owner to earn money - what is the actual damage?

Another question: what are the proofs of using those images? The shapshot can not be one. I don't want to pretend that those images were never on my customer's site, but it is not the same thing if they are there for few monhts and for years. Is there any difference from the legal position?

And the last question: when the company observe the infringement, do they have, at first time, the obligation to send a requests to "cease and desist", or do they have the right to demand damages immediately?
My problem with the accepting the idea of my infringement is that there were no copyright mark, neither wattermark, visible in photo-editing programs.

Thanks in advance for answering.

3

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Greedy Getty in Europe: Hello from Switzerland

« on: November 04, 2008, 02:54:44 PM »

This is my attempt to translate the law text:

Art. 60 of Federal law on copyright and related rights

The compensation is to be calculated depending on following criteria:

a.   benefits obtained by the user by the exploitation of the work, phonogramme .... , or if there is no benefit, on cost caused by the exploitation
b.   number and kind of works, allowances, phonogrammes ... protected and non protected
c.   relation between the works protected and not protected

The compensation is usually equal to maximum 10% of the benefit of the exploitation or of the cost generated by that exploitation (use), for the royalties; and to maximum 3% of the Related Rights; the compensation must be calculated in such a way that a rational management give to beneficiary (claimant) the equitable remuneration.

The use of the work is subjected to the preferential rate.

Please, you other swiss guys, can you improve my translation?

4

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Greedy Getty in Europe: Hello from Switzerland

« on: November 03, 2008, 12:17:06 PM »

Hello from Switzerland !

I don't feel alone anymore, since I've red your messages, Reggy & Fred.

My customer recieved THE letter on july 08. We changed those 3 images, removed the site from archive.org imediately.

First question: how to act to redirect all communication from him to my company? Should I ask my customer to send the letter "for further communication, please contact Xy SA on this address...", or should I contact them directly "my customer received the letter .... etc. For further communcation, please communicate with us". I don't want my customer be enoyed by this, since it is my company that created the site. Do I need to explain that the images were find somewhere on a kind of promotional CD with "free images"? No, I think that we all have a very similar history.

Second question:
Swiss law, extract:
2 Die Entschädigung beträgt in der Regel höchstens zehn Prozent des Nutzungsertrags oder -aufwands für die Urheberrechte und höchstens drei Prozent für die verwandten Schutzrechte; sie ist jedoch so festzusetzen, dass die Berechtigten bei einer wirtschaftlichen Verwaltung ein angemessenes Entgelt erhalten.
What do you think about writting the proposal to Getty, with the copy of the law text and: "We propose you 10% of all earnings generated by the use of these images, which presents 10% of 2000 chf, invoiced to our customer, and 10% of 0 chf that our customer earned by using your images", obviously written in better form?

Third question:
Do you think that there is enough people in the same situation as three of us, in Switzerland, so we can maybe find one layer for all and reduce like that our possible future costs?

Thanks to all, especially to the creator of this site and to Oscar, for his advices.