Getty being sued for $1Billion

OhLook wrote in post #18127986
If the images are in the public domain, what sort of claim to ownership could justify Getty in charging for their use? Getty can't claim that it holds the copyrights.

No, they can't claim a copyright, but Getty is the defendant in this action. They only have to poke holes in the plaintiff's case. The way I understand it (and I have no particular expertise in this area) they only have to shoot down the plaintiff's copyright claim to dispose of this particular lawsuit, which is the subject of this thread. Getty's business practice of billing for copyright infringement where they have no ownership rights is certainly relevant, and is in fact cited to in the complaint. There are, no doubt, other claims that bilked licensees could bring in separate actions (again, I claim no expertise here).

OhLook wrote in post #18127986
If the images are in the public domain, what sort of claim to ownership could justify Getty in charging for their use? Getty can't claim that it holds the copyrights.

They're arguing that by researching, collating, cataloging, advertising and distributing the images they have incurred costs and are therefore allowed to charge a fee, which has merit, but sending a bill for an open copyright picture that wasn't sourced from them, noooo, to the photographer, massive nooooooooo.

I suppose this hinges on how she gave the images to the institute, for them to then become freely available to the public, to my mind, they now own the copyright, not her.

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #18128058
I suppose this hinges on how she gave the images to the institute, for them to then become freely available to the public, to my mind, they now own the copyright, not her.

Indeed. I believe plaintiff's contract/agreement with the Library of Congress was an attachment to the complaint.

And as they're not the ones taking legal action, no legal argument, therefore, no case to answer by Getty. Right or wrong on Getty's part, it's immaterial to this case as I see it, alas............

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #18128089
And as they're not the ones taking legal action, no legal argument, therefore, no case to answer by Getty. Right or wrong on Getty's part, it's immaterial to this case as I see it, alas............

Um ... I meant that the language of the agreement would inform on the plaintiff's intent in how the images would be treated in relation to her copyright. That's material.

OhLook wrote in post #18127986
If the images are in the public domain, what sort of claim to ownership could justify Getty in charging for their use? Getty can't claim that it holds the copyrights.

If the images are in the public domain they don't need to claim ownership. Anyone can do anything they want with them - including sell them. They are simply relying on the fact that people don't realise they can get the images free (and do whatever they want with them).

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18128396
If the images are in the public domain they don't need to claim ownership. Anyone can do anything they want with them - including sell them. They are simply relying on the fact that people don't realise they can get the images free (and do whatever they want with them).

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. "Public Domain" is a commonly misused in this way. The photo must be one shot pre-1923 to meet your description. If it was, then it could be used by whomever for whatever. Just because it's on the internet does not mean it's "in the public domain to for anyone to use as they see fit". FWIW, I'm a big dummy, but I think Ed Greenberg knows what he's talking about.

In fact you can give away your work, AND still maintain the copyright. Which is what Highsmith done.

Now I'm getting confused.
A quote from the link in the original post:

Then we get:

So Getty first claims copyright infringement, and then when they are called on that Getty claims that it can charge anyone they want for use of material that is in the 'public domain'? That makes it look like a scam to me.
I would say sure, they can charge for public domain if the image was acquired through Getty. But the ones they billed her for were obviously not acquired through Getty.

And the problem is now that she might have brought the wrong charges against Getty?

Sorry, I really am confused. Am I right?

No I think she has brought exactly the correct charges against Getty et al. She has never given up her copyright, she has simply made them freely available through the Library of Congress Collection. What Getty and the others have done is change the copyright notice on the images, to imply that they are the authorised agent of the author. This particular section of the DCMA is the ONLY route that she has, since it specifically makes it illegal to change any copyright notice affixed to a work. Displaying the image on their websites with either an Alamy or Getty copyright watermark would be an infringement of that act. You could say that doing the same to an image that was Truly in the Public Domain would also be in breach of that section, since it is applying false copyright information to the image. This also applies to images that have not been registered with the US Copyright office, so it seems the intent of the legislation was meant to be pretty wide.

Alan

Thank you, Alan.

frozenframe wrote in post #18128610
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. "Public Domain" is a commonly misused in this way. The photo must be one shot pre-1923 to meet your description. If it was, then it could be used by whomever for whatever. Just because it's on the internet does not mean it's "in the public domain to for anyone to use as they see fit". FWIW, I'm a big dummy, but I think Ed Greenberg knows what he's talking about.

In fact you can give away your work, AND still maintain the copyright. Which is what Highsmith done.

WRONG WRONG WRONG.
I wasn't assuming that it was in the public domain just because it was on the internet. I was assuming it was in the public domain because she put it in the public domain.

Quote from the Instrument of Gift that she signed when gifting the images to the American people....

Not sure if that actually makes the image public domain or just makes everyone copyright owners but either way Getty can't be sued for infringement for selling the images.

Of course what it doesn't do is allow them to chase other people who are using the images and threaten them with law suits for copyright infringement.

According to Ed Greensberg she retained the copyrights, and had registered them. His account of the lawsuit can be read HERE

frozenframe wrote in post #18129614
According to Ed Greensberg she retained the copyrights, and had registered them. His account of the lawsuit can be read HERE

Actually while he says that in the article text one of the commentators has pointed out the section I quoted which it appears he overlooked.

I can go onto any number of open source projects online, download the entire thing, package it up, and turn around to sell it to other people. Perfectly legal (depending on project license), and often actually done. (Generally anyone selling open source projects like that have done additional work and added 'something' to the mix that makes people want to pay for it rather than just getting it for free.)

What I can't do however is turn around and threaten lawsuits on anyone else hosting the project. I'm fairly sure that would actually fall under criminal fraud in many parts of the world, and would have no better legal standing than me writing up millions of threatening form letters to send out to a mailing list and seeing how many people pay up.

Case almost completely thrown out because the images were public domain and as such there was no infringement. Getty were dinged for claiming copyright (a less serious offence) and settled that.

http://petapixel.com …it-ends-not-bang-whimper/