

Photographer Appeals Ruling Saying It's Not Infringement for Similar Photos - nekojima
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120204/01440917661/photographer-appeals-ruling-saying-its-not-infringement-to-have-vaguely-similar-photos.shtml

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nekojima
There is a temple in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, which like many tourist locations,
where many people take the exact same photo. So much so, that I have at least
six friends on Facebook, most of whom don't know each other, who have posted
the same photo, with roughly the same cropping. This is also a shot, or at
least the composition, which has featured many times in advertisements and
books.

I can see the same shot, or roughly similar composition, for city skylines or
buildings many times with only slight variations. As an amateur photographer
who licenses photos, some of my best revenue photos are of these locations.

If anyone wants to come and sue me for copyright infringement for a photo of
the skyline of Hong Kong, I'd likely create a new site with my infringing
photos and ask for more licensing revenue to help pay to defeat the troll.

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DanBC
> _One might have hoped that Plaintiff - an artist - would have understood as
> much, or that her attorneys, presumably familiar with the basic tenets of
> copyright and intellectual property law, would have recognized the futility
> of this action before embarking on a long, costly, and ultimately wasteful
> course of litigation in a court of law._

~~~
nekojima
It might be that the added exposure she and her photos find, and the resulting
increase in revenue, substantially offsets the cost of litigation.

The attorneys might be in it for an easy payday (or lacked the work volume or
experience) or the artist hoped for a quick judgement and settlement.

