I ended up mediating a silly situation between Getty and a client about six years ago.
The client is a manufacturer of consumer goods, mostly kitchenware. They own a boatload of brands. In 2014 or so they did a mountain of photography to reposition an existing professional cookware brand for consumers - lots of lifestyle shots, as well as your usual product shots. They made the images available in an online, access controlled library for their customers to use in their marketing.
About six months after this branding pack is made available, we hear from the client that their customers are getting large payment demands (tens of thousands, in some cases) from Getty for the images that the client provided.
We approached getty on the client’s behalf, as they were just bewildered and didn’t know where to even begin.
It took about two months to sort out - we had to repeatedly explain the situation, while they argued that they owned the images, and had to go through a lengthy process proving that the client owned the images. Burden of proof was totally on us, and we were getting nowhere fast. While looking at some of the supposedly infringing images, we noticed an incredibly faint watermark embedded in one of them that specified the site that the image had been rendered on - an unprotected image library on one of the client’s customer’s sites.
From here, it transpired that Getty had hoovered up everything in that library, assumed rights, and was selling it. Once we started pushing the tack that they had broken several laws by accessing a computer system that was not intended to be available for them to access, and had stolen images from there, the whole thing, along with all of the images on Getty from that library, vanished. They never even responded.
Our takeaway here was that Getty use bots to find large collections of unique high-res images on sites that aren’t explicitly copyrighted, and just take them, on the odds that they’ll get away with it.
We encouraged the client to sue them for damages, but they were so relieved that the problem had gone away that they just wanted to move on.
If your story is true frankly, then it makes Getty Images a bunch of criminals, period. This is fraud and racketeering, no more, no less.
It's even worse than the "Prenda Law" story where lawyers were making money threatening people who downloaded porn torrents illegally and forced them to settle or be sued, because Getty Images does not own the content at first place, they stole it, literally.
This justice department isn't going to take any action against businesses of any sort, so Getty is pretty much in the clear on this. They might get in trouble in the future, but the end result is unlikely to be more than just a slap on the wrist (a few tens or hundreds of millions in fines) so there isn't much downside for them.
It's not illegal if a corporation does it after all.
I'm specifically having trouble understanding these two bits, please ELI5:
> that their customers are getting large payment demands
and
> Getty had hoovered up everything in that library, assumed rights, and was selling it
Does Getty specifically assert copyright that they don't have in these letters? Or is it more like a "You might be using an unlicensed image and that would cost you thousands, buy a license here"?
The whole thing sounds absolutely ripe for an enterprising legal firm and a RICO suit with the 3x damages.
EDIT: I'm struggling to find a copy of Exhibit A in the case, the letter Getty sent. Anyone have a copy?
>Our takeaway here was that Getty use bots to find large collections of unique high-res images on sites that aren’t explicitly copyrighted, and just take them, on the odds that they’ll get away with it.
While that is a distinct possibility, the more likely cause is that someone else is hoovering up high res images and are selling them to Getty.
Getty doesn't make their own photographs. It's basically a stock image assignment store. https://www.gettyimages.com/workwithus People upload their own images, Getty sells them, and then Getty gives the uploader a cut of the selling price. Getty has no way of knowing if the uploader is themselves falsely claiming copyright.
It wasn't legally on their client; a court would have required that Getty show they held copyright. During negotiations, though, Getty's lawyers can simply make whatever demands and threats they like.
No, they cannot. This is fraud. If I claimed I owned the Statue of Liberty and tried to sell it to you, it would be fraud, too, no matter if you eventually actually paid me money to buy it from me or not.
I wonder if you could send a dmca takedown notice to Getty and leave the burden of proof on them? Is that not how all of these companies play the game?
If they can automate scraping the web and sending out emails, they can automate a "we randomly found these pictures on the internet and shouldn't extort people for them" flag.
> We approached getty on the client’s behalf, as they were just bewildered and didn’t know where to even begin.
It took about two months to sort out - we had to repeatedly explain the situation, while they argued that they owned the images
They weren't bewildered. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Once there was no possibility of extracting money from your client, they relented.
I ended up mediating a silly situation between Getty and a client about six years ago.
The client is a manufacturer of consumer goods, mostly kitchenware. They own a boatload of brands. In 2014 or so they did a mountain of photography to reposition an existing professional cookware brand for consumers - lots of lifestyle shots, as well as your usual product shots. They made the images available in an online, access controlled library for their customers to use in their marketing.
About six months after this branding pack is made available, we hear from the client that their customers are getting large payment demands (tens of thousands, in some cases) from Getty for the images that the client provided.
We approached getty on the client’s behalf, as they were just bewildered and didn’t know where to even begin.
It took about two months to sort out - we had to repeatedly explain the situation, while they argued that they owned the images, and had to go through a lengthy process proving that the client owned the images. Burden of proof was totally on us, and we were getting nowhere fast. While looking at some of the supposedly infringing images, we noticed an incredibly faint watermark embedded in one of them that specified the site that the image had been rendered on - an unprotected image library on one of the client’s customer’s sites.
From here, it transpired that Getty had hoovered up everything in that library, assumed rights, and was selling it. Once we started pushing the tack that they had broken several laws by accessing a computer system that was not intended to be available for them to access, and had stolen images from there, the whole thing, along with all of the images on Getty from that library, vanished. They never even responded.
Our takeaway here was that Getty use bots to find large collections of unique high-res images on sites that aren’t explicitly copyrighted, and just take them, on the odds that they’ll get away with it.
We encouraged the client to sue them for damages, but they were so relieved that the problem had gone away that they just wanted to move on.
I’d wager this isn’t a unique experience.