
Legal Lesson Learned: Copywriter Pays $4,000 for $10 Photo - domino
http://blog.webcopyplus.com/2011/02/14/legal-lesson-learned-copywriter-pays-4000-for-10-photo/
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pbhjpbhj
> _Our web copywriters were under the impression that images on the Web
> without any copyright notices were “public domain” and therefore free to
> use. Naive? Yes. [...]_

I find it almost impossible to believe that copywriters dealing in the
creation of copyright works weren't aware of the very basics of the copyright
mechanism.

If they believed the above then they'd have to believe too that they couldn't
charge anyone to use any content that they wrote that had appeared online?
This sounds like an attempt to cover up mindful dishonesty.

> _While we maintained an active stock photo account for our blog with access
> to an array of suitable photos, one of our copywriters grabbed a photo from
> the Web._

Bam. There you have it, why would they pay for stock photos when they could
simply download those same stock images for free by doing an image search (if
the photos had been used elsewhere already). Indeed they could probably have
found the identical stock photos in the wild with a little legwork.

Does anyone find this convincing?

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loupgarou21
I work with a large number of professional creatives, including copywriters.
They're all pretty well aware of copyright laws. This story might make sense
if his "copywriter" was his 16 year old cousin. Also, I'm going to say that
placing pictures isn't really the job of a copywriter.

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pacifika
Interesting story. After reading the story I still don't know the explanation
of the damages that make up the number $4000. I'm just a developer but what
kind of damages arising from their past infringing use of the image' are they
talking about?

Bluntly: Is the $4000 number just high enough for the order to be taken
seriously and low enough to convince an organization to pay up?

