
Photographer wins $1.2M from companies that took pics off Twitter - cwan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/22/media-copyright-twitter-idUSL2N0J71Y220131122
======
strict9
I applaud this only because of Getty and AFP's willingness to prosecute others
for the same and their unwillingness to share photos for
personal/noncommercial use.

But this is a sad day. I've been a professional photographer for over 10
years, and it makes me sick how paranoid others in the industry are.

Why is it OK to quote what someone said for a news article, but not use their
photo with proper attribution? Because they spent a couple hundred dollars on
a camera? Why is a picture some sacrosanct object but what someone says
worthless? You're pressing a button on a camera and then pressing some buttons
on a computer later.

The balance of power is completely wrong, and photographers, musical artists,
and other "creatives" only shoot themselves in the foot by slathering
watermarks, issuing crazy copyright notices, and using DRM on their
photos/creative works.

If proper attribution is given to the creator (same as quoting what someone
says) then photographs should be shared. Encouraging the sharing of photos
I've taken for clients has only increased my business. It's better for
society.

~~~
ericcumbee
I'm not a legal expert. But to me it seems like If you say something in
public, it being transcribed into a report is a statement of fact and belongs
in what I guess would be called the commons. A photo on the other hand is
something quasi tangible that a person put time, effort and resources into to
create.

Also if you spoke to a reporter I suppose that would be an implied consent to
have your words used.

~~~
ollysb
Yeah, pressing the button is the easy bit, it's getting there that costs the
time/money/foresight.

~~~
MichaelApproved
The same could be said about a quote. Verbalizing the words is the easy bit,
it's getting the education and life experience to come up with the words that
costs the time/money/foresight.

I'm not taking sides with this comment, just pointing out the flaw in your
argument.

~~~
ericcumbee
Thats true, but a photo leaves a lasting artifact. where as spoken words
unless they are transcribed or recorded more or less evaporate. When you take
the effort to transcribe or record those words, you have at least some claim
to use those words. thats all based on I think montesquieu or adam smith.

~~~
jt2190
We're getting close to the point that every word a person speaks can be
automatically recorded. (e.g. Google glass.)

------
JacobJans
I run a small publishing business that does a lot of Facebook Marketing. Our
primary means of promoting our business is to use original content posted
regularly to our Facebook pages. These are usually images that we create
ourselves. Our competitors, however, use an endless stream of pictures,
cartoons, photos, etc that were created by other people. They use other
people's creative work to promote their business, for commercial gain. Their
page is filled every day with content from other people, copied and posted
directly on Facebook. Occasionally credit is given, occasionally it is not
given.

Recently, they used one of our images on their page. They gave no credit, no
links to our site, no compensation, or anything. They did, however, link the
image to their Pinterest page, which in turn linked to their Tumblr. All
giving the impression that they created the image, owned it, and had the right
to use it.

A successful Facebook meme has significant monetary value. The 'response' of a
good meme is predictable, and can easily reach hundreds of thousands of
people. When they posted this image, it did very well. It got thousands of
likes and shares. Of course, this happens every day, and not just to us.
People steal images all the time. It seems to be "the Internet way."

It is easy to turn a blind eye to this. And usually, we don't mind. But when a
direct competitor steals an image and uses it for their own gain, it really
pisses me off. It also harms my business. Each time a Facebook image is
posted, it loses some of its value. Once someone has "liked" it, they've
already liked it, and are less likely to respond in the future.

But, that's just one small piece of the issue. The fact is this competitor has
built their business on stealing other people's content, in order to build an
audience for their Facebook page. They've become rather successful. We are
more successful, but are fighting an uneven battle because of our
unwillingness to steal.

My only question, now that they've stolen one of our images, is what to do
next. My goal is to 'level the playing field', so that I don't have to compete
against thieves. Perhaps a scary letter from a lawyer is in order? They're in
South Africa, and I'm in the United States.

I have a feeling, though, that this simply isn't a fight that I can win.
Respect for copyright is almost non-existent these days. Look at the rest of
the posts on this discussion.

Sigh.

~~~
instakill
I'm a South African. I worked a a dev shop and we have a sort of meme in our
office, we call it "South African innovation". It came about from realizing
how many start-up services from here are almost mirror-images of successful
international start-ups. They don't just serve the same market, they're pretty
much the same website, but for South Africans. Now whenever we spot a new
service or an idea that is clearly an imitation of an existing thing, it is
jokingly referred to as South African innovation. It's not dire, but it's a
shame.

~~~
ma2rten
I don't think it's a bad thing, unless they are really stealing the source
code/layout of the page. Most successful businesses are not original ideas,
but just slightly better/different iterations of an existing idea. Now I am
sure that building a website for South Africa has it's own challenges, e.g.
number of languages spoken, slow internet connection to the rest of the world,
different cultures, etc. Why not have an South African version of X?

------
michaelhoffman
The hypocrisy of major copyright holders never ceases to amaze me. Getty would
go after a business that redistributed Getty's photos for profit in a
heartbeat.

~~~
joeblau
I found the same irony in this story. Getty and AFP would prosecute anyone
trying to resell work. I'm not to familiar with Twitters privacy policy so I'm
not sure who actually owns the pictures that are posted there, but I'm
guessing from the ruling that it's the users.

~~~
_delirium
It's in section 5 of the ToS here:
[https://twitter.com/tos](https://twitter.com/tos)

The short of it is that you retain copyright over your photos, but grant
Twitter a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce them. You
also authorize Twitter to extend that right to third parties via syndication
agreements or APIs. This seems mostly intended to ensure that Twitter can set
up APIs and feeds usable by third parties, although the permission as written
would allow Twitter to engage in broader syndication agreements if they
wanted.

But in any case, third parties can't just grab content and reuse it on their
own. You _could_ probably make some kind of photo-feed website scrolling
recently tweeted photos, maybe even sort them into galleries (as long as your
website complies with the Twitter API's own ToS). But you can't just right-
click/save-as and upload the JPG to embed in your news article, because that
removes it from the context where you're covered by the license the
photographer has granted to Twitter.

------
tommorris
The astounding thing about this case is how little due diligence Getty and AFP
did. In my capacity as a Wikipedia admin, I've handled copyright-related
issues with images and text.

We put an enormous amount of volunteer labour into tracking copyright
violations and removing them: if a photographer complains that someone has
uploaded a copyright violation, our volunteers will go and forensically
examine EXIF data, look at upload metadata on sites like Flickr, check for
digital watermarks, check on Google Images and other search tools to try and
trace the upload history of the image. And even after all that work, it still
feels like it's not quite good enough.

On image licensing, I've emailed government lawyers to verify that our
interpretation of their national copyright policies is correct.

Meanwhile, I've worked with people in the commercial sector whose modus
operandi for producing social media campaigns is "open up Google
Images/Flickr/YouTube and pinch all the things!"

If I can trace the copyright claims on an image by using tools like Google
Image Search, so can AFP and Getty. Not just for copyright purposes, but due
diligence to make sure the metadata checks out with the photojournalistic
claim made of the image. That they aren't doing so ought to give one pause
before trusting agencies like AFP to report the news.

------
Oculus
This ruling seems like a good thing to me. Just because a photographer's work
is easier to copy and use doesn't mean we should be able to use it without
proper compensation. It'd be similar to someone taking code from a website's
source file and using it (In this hypothetical scenario the code is usable and
not minified).

~~~
welder
And what is wrong with taking someone's code from a website and using it?

I'm a programmer and I say NOTHING is wrong with that!

~~~
coldtea
How about I steal your web code and designs and undercut you to your potential
customers?

We're not talking about stealing some CSS idea on some site...

~~~
foobarian
I get the point the OP is trying to make, it just may not be the best example.
The web site code/design is not very valuable on its own without
support/hosting/design iteration/backend design etc. It would be easy to steal
web code and designs, but it's the "undercut to my potential customers" that's
the hard part and already happens in this very competitive market.

------
jws
AFP discovered the photos on a Twitter account other than the photographer's
with their copyrights already stripped. It would have been interesting to see
how much of the blame should lie with that Twitter user.

This was irrelevant however since the judge found that Twitter's TOS only
allows retweeting and personal use, so commercially using the image was a
violation of the TOS. I'm not sure how a Twitter TOS violation turns into DMCA
damages. I suppose the judge didn't want to get into policing all the LOL cats
on the internet.

In one sense this has parallels to the clip art wars. Lots of vendors sold
misappropriated clip art in their collections. Buying it in good faith is not
protection for the end user.

~~~
_delirium
> I'm not sure how a Twitter TOS violation turns into DMCA damages.

It didn't directly. The photographer retains copyright of photos, and sued the
companies for regular copyright violation. One of the companies' defenses was
to claim that they actually had a license, and therefore it was not a
copyright violation. Users who tweet photos do grant certain royalty-free
reproduction rights to both Twitter, and third-party syndicators authorized by
Twitter. See section 5 here:
[https://twitter.com/tos](https://twitter.com/tos). Therefore, if AFP were
using the photos in accordance with terms authorized by Twitter, they would be
covered by this license, and they wouldn't be violating the photographer's
copyright.

The judge ruled that their reuse was not within the scope of these terms,
however, and therefore not covered by that grant of a royalty-free license.
Therefore the defense fails, and they're assessed damages, not for the Twitter
ToS violation, but for reproducing photos without a valid license from the
photographer.

------
alextingle
This is fantastic news. I always thought that the best way to undermine the
stupid copyright regime was to make sure it was applied fully to big
businesses. If only all of the other thousands of small rights holders whose
works have been used without permission could also get million dollar payoffs,
I think we'd see reform _post haste_.

------
Zigurd
Photography is in a strange place. For one thing, it's remarkable that that
concepts that negatives are rarely sold, and that the print constitutes the
artwork, have carried over to digital photography. Both the bits as they
emerge from the camera, and the results of a photographer's digital darkroom
work take the place of the developed film, and prints, which are often the
output of an ink jet printer, have roughly the same value in the fine art
market as as exposed emulsion on paper, and to some extent exist side by side.

The artificiality of shoehorning digital photography into the same rights
framework as evolved for chemical photography creates these stresses. At least
there ought to be different categories of images and rights.

------
RexRollman
I am glad to see this result. Getty and AFP seek to control their own material
with an iron-clad hand but don't respect the rights of others.

~~~
res0nat0r
Getty isn't a single hivemind, it is made up of many individuals.

~~~
pyre
But I'll bet that when it comes time to discuss IP rights, the company (as an
entity) will have no hesitation speaking as if they have some sort of moral
high-ground (e.g. people that 'steal' images are evil... except when we do it,
then it's an accident and should be forgiven).

~~~
res0nat0r
That is the policy of the company to follow that rule as a whole yes, but
individuals can act alone. Just like individual cops can steal drugs from
their busts, but this isn't the policy of the police or Getty to act in this
way, so it is disingenuous to call out a single individuals act as a policy of
the company across the board.

------
sixQuarks
So does this mean that Buzzfeed.com is going to be sued for $1 trillion?

------
ctingom
How does this effect the ability users have to embed Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook posts? If someone embeds a Tweet that contains a photograph is that
considered fine under Twitters policy?

------
mrcactu5
I don't understand. Isn't anything we tweet public domain?

~~~
Steuard
You're kidding, right?

(Just in case you aren't: no, it's emphatically not.)

~~~
rza
I thought that was a fair question which crossed my mind as well. Do your
tweets belong to Twitter (e.g. can they delete/modify your content once it's
on their servers)? If you post a work on a public site, without explicit
copyright, are you granted an implicit copyright? If I post a jsfiddle, are
people allowed to use that in their code? I don't think the questions are that
obvious, at least for me with zero background in copyright law.

~~~
dublinben
Many tweets would not rise to the level of creativity required to earn
copyright protection.

~~~
summerdown2
How do you suggest we measure creativity to know this?

------
cddotdotslash
So, serious question, does this mean that users of Twitter/Facebook can sue
CNN, Fox, and other news sites that lift pictures from their pages without
permission?

~~~
chrismcb
Yes

~~~
Pitarou
... if you can pay the legal bills.

(Or if the lawyers will take your case on a no-win-no-fee basis.)

------
husein10
On one hand I want to cheer since this is an example of David winning a small
scuffle against Goliath.

But on the other hand, the legal tools being employed by David in this case
are the same tools that Goliath uses to limit speech on the web today.

Let's not forget that the copyright system is an anachronism that needs to be
dismantled/rebuilt to suit the modern world. Just because the result in this
case leaves you satisfied doesn't mean that the system in its current form is
unacceptable.

~~~
chrismcb
What is wrong with the system, and how should it be fixed? The main problem I
see (other than the numbers of people breaking it) are copyright lengths.

