Messages

1

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: £2851.42 just for one photograph !

« on: December 10, 2018, 05:55:18 AM »

Thanks for this information; I was unware of this judgement, which serves as a usefull case precedent to motivate people towards negotiating a settlement.

2

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Creative Commons Photos on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

« on: November 28, 2018, 09:50:45 AM »

1. DMCA Takedown Notice is the way to go in the future. Get registered: https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/

Sidenote: if you personally, or a member of your staff (whether salaried or not), or any person acting under your direction (think: contractors, subcontractors, etc.) place infringing material on a website or other publishing platform associated with you, or under your significant ownership and/or control, you will not be exempted from liability under the DMCA; the immunity afforded by the DMCA only applies to situations when wholly unconnected third parties infringe via your services.

3. Clean all of your sites and social media platforms. Use this time to both learn from your naivety and make yourself extortion-proof in the future.

I personally love how you've made your website "extortion proof"; a quick glance at https://artoftravel.tips/things-to-do-in-london-when-you-dont-want-to-be-outside/#.W_6oPOj7Srw shows the majority of photographs seem to have been licensed from (drumroll, please....) Getty Images, or their sub-brands. 

3

Legal Controversies Forum / Copytrack

« on: November 28, 2018, 06:34:05 AM »

This is definitely food for thought for anyone that receives emails from Copytrack; it's sad to say that, even if photographers signed up to use their service in good faith, it looks like both image creators and those who infringed (not going to touch on innocent/unwitting etc.) are possible victims of what looks like a large-scale fraud.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/11/27/copytrack-a-german-photography-ico-thats-getting-sued-over-where-it-sent-the-money

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Legal Controversies Forum / Re: IPTC and CEPIC efforts with Google result in more robust copyright information

« on: November 28, 2018, 06:26:52 AM »

The feature is very much live; when I look at any Google indexed results of images in my online archive, it clearly displays the IPTC and EXIF data embedded in them.

The next - bigger - hurdle is for clients to not strip out IPTC data from image files when they license them; it's a technical issue, because let's say that a small (500px or less) .jpg is all they need to use - that can be rendered at a file size of just a few kilobytes, allowing for fast page loading. That same 500px .jpg, with full IPTC and EXIF data embedded, can be many multiples of that size.

For every image, that adds extra bandwidth fees when serving them up... at no current net benefit to the client.

This aside, the roll-out is still a step forward in the right direction.

5

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Pixsy Demand Email

« on: November 21, 2018, 11:02:24 AM »

If I register now is it too late? is there any other way to have the DMCA safe harbor provisions?

Short version: yes.

Slightly longer version: you're only covered under safe harbor immunity from the effective date of registering your agent's details; if your site has published potentially infringing material at any time before that date, you'd still be liable.

So - best to perform a full audit of your site, clear out any material you think might be infringing, and register your agent as soon as possible.

6

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: PicRights.com

« on: November 09, 2018, 06:00:53 PM »

Their address on the email is a PO Box 61182 address from Anne Sinclair, on companies houses their uk office is not even registered in London, but the PO box is in London.

From beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11172740

PicRights UK Limited, 4 Imperial Place, Maxwell Road, Borehamwood, England, WD6 1JN

Borehamwood is within the M25 circular that bounds the Greater London area so, though it doesn't have a London postal code, you're kinda splitting hairs to claim they're "not in London" 

7

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copytrack email

« on: November 08, 2018, 02:26:29 PM »

Let me ask you this: if the band you rep gets booked to play at an event, are you happy with the event just "crediting" them and no money changing hands, or do you want to get paid?

Do you expect the band to be paid their fee whether five, fifty or five-hundred people attend?

If the event isn't profitable for the organizer, do you shrug your shoulders and say "Sorry guys, these folk didn't make much money, so they're not paying us"

Lastly - and this should hit home - if you found the bands music being used in a capacity where it should have been paid for, would you be satisfied with a response of "whoops, sorry, we'll stop using it now"

Artists ripping on other artists is pretty parasitic behavior in my books: do the decent thing, accept an error was made (as a learning point), make an offer to pay the photographer, and move on.

8

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Pixsy Letter Questions

« on: October 26, 2018, 02:44:06 PM »

Anyone can upload photos to Flickr under Creative Commons

... including people that didn't create the photographs in the first place. I've come across instances of this happening and, although quite rare, it can be a shit-show for anyone that uses the fraudulent CC image file.

As other folks on the forum will tell you: the only way to be 100% certain you have the rights to make use of any photograph is if you create it yourself, or hire a photographer to shoot materials just for you, ensuring you have a written contract between you.

9

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Lapixa copyright email received by client

« on: October 25, 2018, 07:14:04 PM »

As far as I'm concerned a software that determines the market value of a photo is bogus.  What determines "market value" of anything is the laws of supply and demand, not a software created by a photog organization to artificially create a market value.  for their worthless photos.

Salty, much? 

Not to disabuse you of your notion but, as I said, tens of thousands of photographers just like me use fotoQuote and swear by it. Why? Well, their own website explains (emphasis added)

"Unlike other sources of stock photo prices based on solely on surveys, often with unverifiable data, fotoQuote’s prices were based on actual sales records.

The original 1992 prices in fotoQuote were based on research done over a 6-month period. To get accurate prices we reviewed thousands of confidential sales records from national stock agencies and photographers all across the US. We built a price grid and then checked back with experts in each category to be sure the prices were accurate. As a last step, we again checked the prices against thousands of actual sales records from agencies and photographers.

Since 1993 fotoQuote has been the stock photography pricing standard in North America. Often, when we would call photographers or agencies to check on their current prices for an update we would be told, “hang on, I’ll look it up. They were looking it up in fotoQuote!

For this latest version of fotoQuote we spent a year looking at every source of pricing that we could find. We spent a lot of time contacting photographers, going through the pile of notes and feedback from our customers, and scouring web sites and forums. We wanted to see what kind of problems photographers were having with pricing, and what kind of solutions were being suggested to solve them."

10

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Lapixa copyright email received by client

« on: October 23, 2018, 11:00:45 AM »

Another thing that Lapixa does is source "FotoQuote" which Lapixa claims to be "the industry standard photo pricing guide." The only thing I could find on FotoQuote is that it appears to be software developed by Cradox fotoSoftware.  Without seeing the software, it sounds to me anyone can buy the software and upload any kind of values into it.  As such, it does not strike to me as any real measurement of market value of any given photo.

Myself, and many of my peers, rely on FotoQuote as the backbone of our licensing calculations, and their pricing engine is "baked in" to the professional photo hosting/sales platform Photoshelter, which is used by tens of thousands of working photographers worldwide, so (in my opinion) it's quite fair to describe the baseline fees they suggest to photographers as being industry standard, in the same way that other software tools like Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, PhotoMechanic etc. are also commonly in use by tens of thousands of working shooters around the globe.

11

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Pixsy Letter Questions

« on: October 18, 2018, 04:17:56 AM »

On his new website, right below these photos, he wrote that he had to climb over a wall on the property and get past alarm systems.

Do bear in mind this could be an embellishment of the truth, not to mention that - without knowing what entity owns the property - even if a trespass did occur (and it's possible that one did), you're looking at a question of either state or national law as to whether the matter would be criminal or civil in nature and also if there is a statute of limitations for bringing claims.

My reply to Pixsy was that before we have a conversation, I would like them to verify that he was given permission to take and license these photos.

(IANAL disclaimer) This is where things get murky: copyright in a work is automatic, so the photographer still has rights in their creation almost regardless of the circumstances in which it was created; if you used their work without consent, they have grounds to claim against you. It would be up to the property owner alone to explore any rights they might have to prevent the photographer from displaying or licensing the image in question, and again this will fall to a question of national or state law. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law for an overview of this complex matter)

12

Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Higbee & Associates - Demand Letter and Release Agreement

« on: October 15, 2018, 02:18:40 PM »

25 million times for the search result?

This is glitch in Google's code; if I reverse-search one of my own images which I know to have "gone viral" over ten years ago, the first page of the Google query states that there are 25,270,000,000 results... but the truth is there are only 234 actual instances of the photograph in question being indexed, and perhaps two-thirds of those are 'hotlinked'

Is this the piece of shit Tom Schwabel again?!

You really have a hard-on for Tom, don't you? Unrequited love, is it?? 

Why won't that fuckhead just go into a hole and die with his shitty overedited copied from everyone else trash?

As has been mentioned at least twice, the Statute of Limitations has expired for your infringement... why so serious? 

13

Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Higbee, PicRights and AFP for photo inside a PDF

« on: October 04, 2018, 05:01:38 PM »

Technically billions of people are guilty are infringement when a copyrighted image is shared on social media.

Nope. If the photograph is shared using the built-in tools of a service like Twitter or Facebook, then as long as the image in question is either the uploader's own work - of they have permission from teh creator to upload it to social media - then there's no infringement.

[quote author=kingkendall link=topic=5336.msg23282#msg23282 date=1538673204The copyright troll makes money by sending demand letters for outrageous sums to snatch up the low hanging fruit.  The court makes $400 dollars a pop for suits that are actually filed.  Lawyers for plaintiff and defendants make money for stretching out a mickey mouse claim that that eventually will end in a settlement one way or another.  So where is the incentive to fix it all?[/quote] 

Look at what has been going on in the EU, where I live: new laws were voted on last month which mandate that information services themselves would need to pay a portion of their revenues to rightsholders so that copyright content can be shared on their networks. The how of this system will be meted out over the next two years, but the intended end result is that social media users - in Europe at least - should be able to post most rightsholder content without repercussions to themselves, because the services will foot the bill.

If you're at all familiar with the concept of music recording mechanical royalties vis-a-vis radio stations then you'll have a grasp on the intent, since both the above, and my foregoing statement, are an oversimplification of the framework for the sake of brevity.

You can bet the farm that other nations are closely following the new EU legislation as a possible framework for updating their own copyright laws.

Meanwhile the little guy is getting hurt in a system that set up to screw him coughed in the language of legality.  He's the one that's called a thief by a bigger thief who has the nerve to act like he has the moral high ground when he's committing extortion?

Again, nope: making use of someone else's property, without their consent, is the issue. Legislation sets out possible avenues of restitution and, to avoid burdening the courts with every single claim, they encourage parties to attempt to resolve their differences before taking the more formal and serious step of petitioning the courts.

If you want to call that extortion, then your argument is based on semantics and personal opinion instead of definitions under law.

14

Legal Controversies Forum / IPTC and CEPIC efforts with Google result in more robust copyright information

« on: October 02, 2018, 07:00:48 PM »

iptc.org/news/google-images-now-displays-image-credits-based-on-iptc-photo-metadata

TL/DR: If Google indexes a photograph that has IPTC metadata embedded in it, it will now display those results as part of any search query. The next major hurdle for photographers and agencies will be to ensure that their client's workflows keep all metadata intact at the point of publication.

On a personal note, I'd love to see Google's algorithm give priority to results that contain embedded IPTC data/

If that happens, it will go a long way to preventing instances of "I didn't know the image was under copyright" or "I didn't know how to find the author" which, by extension, will mean people are less likely to use such works in a cavalier manner - which could lead to a net reduction in infringement claims and litigation.

That's got to be a win-win for everyone, right?

15

Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Higbee, PicRights and AFP for photo inside a PDF

« on: October 02, 2018, 11:45:10 AM »

Google have been displaying notifications that "Images May be Subject to Copyright" alongside their image search results for at least six years - a few months after they made their reverse-search algorithm publicly usable.

http://www.mediacrazed.com/google-images-for-your-website