> ...did not release them into the public domain
This is incorrect. According to the Library of Congress:
"Ms. Highsmith has stipulated that her photographs are in the public domain." [1]
This is incorrect. According to the Library of Congress:
"Ms. Highsmith has stipulated that her photographs are in the public domain." [1]
Also explicit permission is given to the library to make copies of the work for security,preservation etc.
[1] Google Gov-Uscourts-Nysd-460787-1-2
that seems pretty clear cut to me. Conditions for reproduction only seem to express the general ways the content should be available for users of the library. Nothing limiting availability, in fact it's promoting methods of being available.
So that leaves the question of a: whether or not getty et al were able to sell works in the public domain. My quick read of it seems that if they can come up with some kind of argument that they are selling derivative work (including perhaps some kind of unique identification layer, or meta data perhaps ... ?), OR that they are selling a reproduction. tenuous, but that may be their justification.
as for requesting a license fee, well that's on LCS and Alamy (who I don't think have had an issue in the past 3 years of this stuff, so the multiplier doesn't apply here)
NB: Alamy being a uk company, so they can hide behind a corporate shield if their assets are mostly offshore...
this is the settle page, from the first exhibit: https://settle.lcs.global/103173853953 -- that's what she got sent. It doesn't appear that they argue they are the exclusive license holder, and especially if they argue they are holding a license to derivative work -- well. that's a whole ball of wax.
Thinking further, since she no longer holds the copyright to these images, and the United States is not listed as a co-plaintiff, I'm not even sure she has standing to bring this case at all -- but, on that, IANAL. :P
I hereby dedicate to the public all rights, including copyrights throughout the world, that I possess in this collection.
I have the feeling the lawyer who drafted this instrument of gift was a very competent one as in USA law the copyright of a collection or compilation does not affect the copyright of the works included in it.
17 U.S.C. § 103(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
For example:
This photo-
http://www.gettyimages.com/license/515020819
is actually this photo:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178341487
which was taken by a now dead photographer called Russell Lee, and owned by the Farm Security Administration.
PS: this same person appears to have about 500k listings for prints etc on amazon.com..... why aren't they a co-defendant?
Alamy claim they delete all copies of contributor photos from their servers 45 days after you terminate your contract but failed to do this, and continued serving my images for many months after our agreement ended. When I contacted them they first claimed it was Google's fault (cached images) and them later admitted they had done it but were still defiant and claimed they could do it because finding my images was 'difficult'.
They are a large photo agency and their infrastructure is first-class, so I had some interesting email and telephone exchanges with Level 3 and AWS when I sent them DMCA takedown notices and explained that there was no 'safe harbor' for them and I had absolute proof (the Exif metadata with my name and copyright notice was still preserved in the images and I provided direct alamy.com/... links to them hosted by Alamy).
Blog post here, if you want the whole story including replies from Alamy. They seem like one of the better photo agencies but damn, they really don't like being held to the same standards they hold the public to. https://www.tombrossman.com/blog/2014/alamy-copyright-and-ex...
Wouldn't this make all electronically transmitted media into "derivative works", though? This sounds like such a reading would make the concept meaningless (and also possibly contradict the outcome of other infringement/attribution cases)
Additionally, every time I download something from the web and store it on my hard drive, my OS will enrich it with metadata: file name and path, timestamps, local user, permissions, etc. So unless a site author grants all visitors the permission to create derived works, I'd be infringing just by visiting their web site.
Finally, if you assume that only some metadata counts as creating a derived work, Getty would have to prove that all users they threatened did in fact use Getty's "enhanced" version of the image and not the original. I find it very unlikely that the photographer herself would have used Getty's version and not herselfes, so I don't think they did that.
Are you maybe thinking of Moral Rights? Those are inalienable and not transferrable in many countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
Copyrights are also assigned automatically to the creator by the act of creating something, that might also be what you were thinking of.
However, "inalienable" was incorrect - you can most definitely sell your copyright.
Second, apparently I was wrong even then: see https://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html
Face, meet egg.
if i read 17 U.S. Code § 201 (d) clearly, it suggests you can transfer ownership of copyright in any normal legal way of executing a contract.
I think your confusion is around the idea of works falling into the public domain via expiry of copyright, and/or works that do not have an explicit declaration of rights ownership.
In this case it seems she was pretty clear about her transfer of ownership. I don't believe you can rescind that just as you prefer, at any time.
> The photographer’s photos are listed on the library’s website as being in the public domain with “no known restrictions on publication.”
> However, Highsmith says she never abandoned her photo copyrights