Haitian Photographer Wins Major U.S. Copyright Victory

[noisycheese]

Here is a prime example of why it is so crucial to register your images with the U.S. Copyright Office http://www.copyright.gov/



LINK: http://www.1prophoto.com/blog/post/...ographer-Wins-Major-US-Copyright-Victory.aspx

Haitian Photographer Wins Major U.S. Copyright Victory
By JamesNYC


Photographers have struggled financially over the last decade as millions of images have been taken and published on the Web without proper attribution or compensation. And when photographers try to pursue copyright violators, it is often difficult and expensive. On Friday, the Haitian photographer Daniel Morel won a major copyright victory after a four-year fight over images he had originally sent out via social media.

A Manhattan jury found that Agence France-Presse and its American distributor Getty Images willfully infringed upon Mr. Morel’s copyright of eight pictures he took of the 2010 Haiti earthquake and awarded him $1.22 million.

“During the earthquake, they were selling my exclusive photos for $45,” Mr. Morel said after the ruling. “This is wrong. Not only did these agencies steal the photos, but they were also giving them away.”

His photographs were originally posted on TwitPic, a website that allows users to put pictures on Twitter, by Mr. Morel hours after the earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010. It was then reposted by a Twitter user named Lisandro Suero, who claimed they were his. Agence France-Presse took the photos from TwitPic and distributed them to clients. Getty Images distributed the photos in the United States.

The photographs moved by Getty were used on NYTimes.com briefly that evening. The images also were used by The Washington Post, ABC, CBS and others who settled with Mr. Morel before Friday’s ruling.

John Lapham, general counsel for Getty Images, responded to the verdict Saturday morning in a phone interview.

“We’re disappointed with the damages,” he said. “And we understand that Mr. Morel’s pictures were miscredited, and that’s why we took the steps to pull the images and make corrections as soon as we were made aware. We’ve taken a lot of steps, at the time and since then, to improve and enhance our ingestion practice to best protect people’s copyright.”

Efforts to reach Agence France-Presse for comment on Saturday were unsuccessful.

Mr. Morel, who is 62 and lives in Port-au-Prince, was in Manhattan for the court case. His work from Haiti was featured on Lens on Jan. 27, 2010. After the ruling, he said he had pursued his case for four years “because someone had to fight for photographers.”

After he had objected to the use of his images, Agence France-Presse filed a suit against Mr. Morel seeking a judgment that the agency had not infringed upon his copyright and that instead he was interfering with its business practices. But Alison Nathan, a Federal District Court judge, disagreed and ruled this year that Agence France-Presse and Getty had infringed on Mr. Morel’s copyright.

It was up to this jury to determine whether the infringement had been willful, and to decide the damages. The jury also found that Agence France-Presse and Getty had violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Originally, the agency argued that Twitter’s terms of service allowed them to use the images once they were posted. In January 2011, a Federal District Court judge ruled against the agency and said that it needed Mr. Morel’s permission to publish his photographs.

In a phone interview Friday night, Mickey Osterreicher, the general counsel to the National Press Photographers Association, said that the ruling reinforced photographers’ rights in the era of social media.

“Like anything of value, people need to ask permission, give credit and pay fair compensation for those images,” he said. “And when they don’t, photographers need to be able to stand up for their rights.”

He added: “This ruling is important because far too often we find that photographers don’t have the power to stand up to those that infringe with impunity. I hope that this sends a message, but in reality we need a cultural change so that once again photographs are valued.”

 

[kbg32]

Copyrighting breaking news would not have made sense at the time. The images were meant to be used immediately and were posted with his credit line before they were stolen. Getty failed to verify the source/ownership/copyright.

 

[rwintle]

I am still astonished he posted these to TwitPic in the first place. Yes, the subsequent actions by Seuro, AFP and Getty were reprehensible and cannot in any way be defended. But putting newsworthy and potentially valuable photos up on TwitPic, unwatermarked and big enough to publish, seems a bit surprising to me.

Admittedly, I know little about how photojournalists file photos in this day and age (or any other). Morel is certainly an accomplished and experienced PJ and I guess this was usual practice for him?

 

[noisycheese]

Copyrighting breaking news would not have made sense at the time. The images were meant to be used immediately and were posted with his credit line before they were stolen. Getty failed to verify the source/ownership/copyright.

For new images, you can post them and then copyright them. You have a 90 day time frame from the date of first publishing new images to register them as new work.

After 90 days, they must be registered as previously published work. Infringements after the date of registration for previously published work are actionable in court, but infringements prior to registration are not.

 

[shootar401]

I think there is more to the story than what we are reading.

I'm going to side with Getty on this one for one.

 

[tunalegs]

I think there is more to the story than what we are reading.

I'm going to side with Getty on this one for one.

There's years worth of articles about this. Getty was wrong, albeit through ignorance. But "not knowing" something isn't really an excuse in business.

I'm not really sure registering a copyright would have made much of a difference, as the pictures were scooped up and disseminated fairly rapidly it seems. Even if he had registered the copyright he'd still have faced the exact same problem of image theft, he just may have spent less time in court resolving it.

 

[Scrambler]

I think there is more to the story than what we are reading.

I'm going to side with Getty on this one for one.

Do you mean more than this thread? Or more than the blow-by-blow descriptions elsewhere on the net?

Two juries have disagreed with you, and they got as much of the story as anyone will ever get.

Getty and AFP knew what they were doing. So said the jury. So says everyone but AFP and Getty.

I can't get my phone to post links but google "haiti getty" and read the editorial and reporting for yourself.