Photographer Files $1 Billion Suit Against Getty for Licensing Her Public Domain Images
Massive, massive copyright fail by Alamy and Getty Images.
Since each violation of copyright in this case allows the plaintiff to seek damages up to $25,000, the statutory damages for Getty’s 18,755 violations amount to $468,875,000. But because the company was found to have violated the same copyright law within the past three years — in 2013, Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million in a suit against Getty, after the agency pulled his photos from Twitter and distributed them without permission to several major publications — Highsmith can elect to seek three times that amount: hence the $1 billion suit. “The economic damage that Ms. Highsmith has suffered includes, without limitation, any and all revenue received by the Defendants based on purported licenses sold for the Highsmith Photos. These funds represent money that Ms. Highsmith could have received had she attempted to monetize her photos through the Defendants,” the complaint states. “The injury to Ms. Highsmith’s reputation has been … severe,” it continues. “There is at least one example of a recipient of a threatening letter for use of a Highsmith Photo researching the issue and determining that Ms. Highsmith had made her photos freely available and free to use through the Library website. … Therefore, anyone who sees the Highsmith Photos and knows or learns of her gift to the Library could easily believe her to be a hypocrite.”
(tags: getty alamy images copyright licensing relicensing public-domain carol-highsmith)