Darren Addy wrote: >Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but: In short, your client is screwed >for using an image they simply took off of the internet. As any lawyer (and >particularly a lawyer who is a photographer) knows, U.S. Copyright exists >at the moment of image creation. Getty uses sophisticated software to >search for images being used. They have more resources than your client to >keep this going and make their life hell. The truth is that companies like >Getty make far more money off of infringement than they do from legal >licensing, these days.
Pretty much on the money here. I don't know if Getty actually makes *more* money from infringements than from stock licensing (I don't have access to their books!) but they do make a lot. >The only thing (probably) left to negotiate is the AMOUNT of the infringement. Not negotiable. Not with Getty. They just bill what they would have changed for the usage in question. >If the image was NOT actually registered with the U.S. Copyright office, >your liability is less. If it's Getty there's about a 0% chance of the image not being registered. >If your client (or whoever they got the image from) cropped OFF a watermark >or copyright area, their liability under law is far higher. The only thing >you are doing now is trying to negotiate for the lowest possible settlement >without going to court (which would not be in your client's best interests >because they would LOSE). They are probably looking at 4 figures. I had Getty come after me for an image on my web site (long story but it turned out to be a mistake and they were good about dropping the whole thing when I talked to them on the phone). The payment they wanted was around $650.00. Going to court would have cost well into the 5 figures. And as I understand it, in copyright cases the loser pays all the legal fees of the winner, so Getty has *nothing* to lose by going to court if it's really their image. Your only hope is that it's one of the Public Domain images Getty has been selling as their own. But I wouldn't get my hopes up over that: Not only do those images represent just a tiny fraction of Getty's catalogue, Getty's currently being sued over that practice so I very much doubt they're pursuing payments over any of the images in question at this time they'll be hoping to keep the matter quiet until the suits are settled. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
