Photographer sues Getty Images for Licensing Her Public Domain Images

[MohawkADE]

You may want to be cautious about using any images from Getty in any circumstance, there have been multiple reports of people getting letters from Getty stating that they have infringed their copyright and demand a $120 or so fee. One woman by the name of Carol Highsmith received one such letter recently, the catch was the infringing photo was her own that she donated to the public domain via the Library of Congress.

 

She soon discovers that Getty and other stock image sites have taken her entire archive of public domain photos and licensed them without her knowledge or permission, she is now suing for $1 Billion. More information in the linked articles below...

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/photographer-sues-getty-images-for-selling-photos-she-donated-to-public/

 

http://hyperallergic.com/314079/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/

 

Self Portrait of Carol Highsmith. 1980.

[SSL]

Good for her. Hope whoever sent that infringement letter feels like an idiot now.

[Energycore]

Would be nice to provide the quotes from Getty's CEO, they stink of evil corporate motherfuckers.

 

And hopefully Getty fucking dies like Gawker did

 

Lol I got mad

[NumLock21]

Getty rhymes with Yeti

 

[WolfDeville]

I hope she wins

[JAKEBAB]

$1B just a tad bit high don't you think?

[rattacko123]

1 minute ago, JAKEBAB said:

$1B just a tad bit high don't you think?

$120 copyright fine is just a tad bit high don't you think?

[Technous285]

It's already had two articles over at TorFreak. ;P

https://torrentfreak.com/photographer-files-1bn-copyright-claim-against-getty-images-160728/ (July 28th)

https://torrentfreak.com/getty-images-bite-back-in-1-billion-copyright-dispute-160801/ (August 1st)

[Misanthrope]

Probably the scummiest fucking move I heard this past few weeks. Though maybe because Ubi has been quiet and Kotaku has turn shit over to the Hulkster.

[Tech Inquisition]

1 hour ago, MohawkADE said:

You may want to be cautious about using any images from Getty in any circumstance, there have been multiple reports of people getting letters from Getty stating that they have infringed their copyright and demand a $120 or so fee. One woman by the name of Carol Highsmith received one such letter recently, the catch was the infringing photo was her own that she donated to the public domain via the Library of Congress.

 

She soon discovers that Getty and other stock image sites have taken her entire archive of public domain photos and licensed them without her knowledge or permission, she is now suing for $1 Billion. More information in the linked articles below...

Damn straight!

1 hour ago, JAKEBAB said:

$1B just a tad bit high don't you think?

Will probably sink most of these sites...

6 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Donate and got sued...

And then demands not $1m, but $1b

 

Fighting stupid with stupid I guess.

 

Or proving a bloody hard point... organizations don't respect copyright laws and rights of the owners.

[You_are_a_cunt]

Good. Getty went down Scum road and they should pay for it through their ears.

 

$1bn is a hefty pile of cash, but ridiculous events should be met with ridiculous actions

[Dredgy]

2 hours ago, JAKEBAB said:

$1B just a tad bit high don't you think?

Her library is quite substantial (and well known), at over 100000 images. So it works out to be about $1000 per image, and Getty is profiting off of each one. So it's not actually that unreasonable. But of course settlement/awarded payout will be lower.

[DrMikeNZ]

39 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

Her library is quite substantial (and well known), at over 100000 images. So it works out to be about $1000 per image

That should be $10000 per image, still reasonable. Getty Images licence costs are very high. just throwing some random numbers into their price calculator they quoted $9120 NZD ($6536 USD) plus tax for use in a magazine or $595 NZD ($426 USD) plus tax for use of a photo in a blog for 6 months. 

Shouldn't it be the public domain suing Getty Images though?

 

Perhaps Getty could diversify their business and sell oxygen licenses, then send out infringement notices to everyone in the entire world for breaching their attempts to rip people off.

[ShadowCaptain]

Good on her

[MohawkADE]

5 hours ago, JAKEBAB said:

$1B just a tad bit high don't you think?

Likely a settlement will happen for a more moderate price. Still, bad karma on Getty.

[Bittenfleax]

$1 billion?!! I would be happy with 2 1080's...

[Bensemus]

So she's allowed to sue up to $25,000 per infringement of which there are over 18,000 so about $500 million. Then because the company she is sueing had been found guilty of this before recently she can go after 3x the normal amount or close to $1.5b. Seems she's letting them off easy by only asking for $1b :P

[Trixanity]

Stop right there, criminal scum! You have violated the law! You can either pay the court a fine or serve your sentence. 

 

The story sounds ridiculous. Sounds like they've taken public domain photos and selling licenses for them. You could argue they've created an easy central repository and that's their reason for taking money for otherwise free photos but it's still shady even if that was the case and to top it off by trying to take money from the photographer of the photo. Massive failure. 

[laminutederire]

Bad call from her to sue for a billion dollars. She comes off as a bit too opportunist and may loss because of that... because well it's the world we live in especially in the UK/US world.

It's a shame because she deserves to win.

[Centurius]

Good on her, it's about time stock image websites get their scummy practices exposed.

[Technous285]

4 hours ago, laminutederire said:

Bad call from her to sue for a billion dollars. She comes off as a bit too opportunist and may loss because of that... because well it's the world we live in especially in the UK/US world.

It's a shame because she deserves to win.

The basic math for damages for Getty claiming to own the copyright on her pictures (so they can sell licenses for them) says she can sue for $500M USD, but because Getty has lost a case already in the past 3 years it gets to be tripled upto $1.5B USD, so even $1B is kinda letting them off lightly from the maximum damages she could get from them due to the circumstances.

[laminutederire]

Just now, Technous285 said:

The basic math for damages for Getty claiming to own the copyright on her pictures (so they can sell licenses for them) says she can sue for $500M USD, but because Getty has lost a case already in the past 3 years it gets to be tripled upto $1.5B USD, so even $1B is kinda letting them off lightly from the maximum damages she could get from them due to the circumstances.

We'll see what the jury will say..

[dalekphalm]

Those fuckers (Getty) tried to sue us for images on our website (We're a Public Library), so this is just sweet irony to me.

[d3sl91]

Looks like they are getting sued again today over another 47k pictures.

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/getty-images-sued-again-over-alleged-misuse-of-over-47000-photos/

[Bensemus]

2 hours ago, d3sl91 said:

Looks like they are getting sued again today over another 47k pictures.

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/getty-images-sued-again-over-alleged-misuse-of-over-47000-photos/

so $25,000 x 47,000 x 3 = $3.5B max

$3.5B + $1B = $4.5B max

That is a lot of money!

 

According to Bloomberg they are only worth $3.3B

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-23/gettys-pics-worth-1-000-words-and-3-dot-3-billion