I’m glad you gave him the information he needs but let’s give him a break.
Yes he should. This [1] is literally the second link to the Google search "what do I do if someone steals my photograph" and it has a nice check box of things to do which includes this step: Do some research
Find out the infringing person’s name as well as their contact information. This information is often available in the website’s “About Us” section. Use a website such as WhoIsHostingThis.com to learn the website’s ISP. This information may be necessary later
Typing "Netflix General Counsel" into Google gives you the address of Dave Hyman as the first link.
If you go to Gough Lui's website (http://goughlui.com/about-me-a-short-bio/publications-and-ap...) he is clearly fairly internet aware and understands how to use search engines.
Based on that I think it is well within the GP's expectation that Dr. Lui should be able to figure that out and send a letter to Netflix demanding either they stop shipping their product or retroactively license his imagery for $<x> where he might want to consult with a Photography Agent to understand what size 'x' might represent.
[1] https://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2016/01/27/images-stol...
I don't think it's totally crazy to write a blog post & publicize it on social media as an alternative to the traditional executive-email-carpet-bomb. It's not necessarily the best strategy but it's certainly not the worst.
The link says “make a copy of the infringed work.” It seems from this blog post and what he sent to the customer service and PR link he certainly did that.
“Determine that the use was actually theft.” Again I think Dr. Lui did that as well. It seems he has at least a basic understanding of copyright law.
“Do some research.” Well he has a hard time finding the corporate information for Netflix, or even a phone number. In his post he points this out. So as a means to find that information he did contact customer service. I guess he could have contacted their isp ;) which is another suggestion that your link gives. But I’m not sure he would have found any additional help by doing so.
My point is two fold. First, your helpful checklist isn’t actually that helpful in this case. Second, he actually followed all of those steps. I guess he could have googled for Netflix corporate. This would have shown him officers and directors. Whether that would be useful is hard to tell. It’s also important to remember that General Counsel is an American term. It does not always translate outside of the US.
1) All inbound corporate communication channels should have an escalation path to the registered agent / general counsel.
2) Potential plaintiffs should be able to access the directions here https://blogmedia.whoishostingthis.com/wp-content/uploads/20... from here https://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2016/01/27/images-stol... .
3) The directions in 2) need additional guidance language for international issues.
4) Maybe 1) should have a link to 2) or something like it, but for more general legal issues / workflows.
I can see that in this case that a web search would have helped, but the root of every complicated, multi-party, decision problem is probably not going to be found on the first page every single time. In 2017, I'd strongly argue that it really should be.
And while I don't necessarily expect anyone to know off the top of their head that the top legal contact for a company will be called their 'general counsel', there are many many many stories on the web about people who have had their photos misappropriated and used (from travel brochures to bus stop ads) and doing any research at all would give you a clear sense of what the right course of action would be to do here. Further I would expect anyone with a PhD to be familiar with how to research a new topic of interest, to evaluate sources, and to derive the key principles underlying the system if they were widely understood and published (like image copyright is).
Additionally, I've tried calling the corporate number for a number of companies in the past, and oftentimes they are just a message that says I should email them if I need to contact corporate. SF companies are particularly bad with this, I guess paying people to answer the phone is a waste of money.
If your customer service can't figure out how to escalate legal issues, that sounds like the fault of the company, not the fault of the person who is trying to bring legal issues to their attention.
That said, finding somebody a little farther down the chain in the legal department might yield a faster initial result at most big companies; this type of infringement is comparatively small potatoes for the GC.
I work in marketing, and it drives me nuts when people say "well we didn't know about this because people didn't contact us in the correct manner." If there is a way to contact you, assume that someone will use it to contact you about literally anything.
People assume the structure of their organization is obvious because they are familiar with it. Someone trying to contact the organization should not have to divine the nature of the beast like a bunch of blind men trying to determine the nature of an elephant.
That's the person on file with wherever they incorporated who accepts legal paperwork during business hours -- and thus can always easily be reached by mail. Companies are required to have one of these, and they'll deal with routing legal complaints internally. Just send your angry letter with tracking to the registered agent, so you get a signature when they drop it off.
For Netflix, it seems like:
> The address of the registered office of this corporation in the State of Delaware is Corporation Trust Center, 1209 Orange Street, City of Wilmington, County of New Castle, Delaware 19081. The name of its registered agent at such address is The Corporation Trust Company.
So if you send your angry mail there, Netflix legal will almost certainly read it.
"The company itself" is a finite set of humans with jobs. Dave Hyman's job is to handle legal issues involving Netflix. You're saying that the best course of action to resolve this legal issue involving Netflix is to call the company's tech support?
> that sounds like the fault of the company
OP is already dealing with a fault of the company. Declaring that the company has a second fault isn't helping.
I've called customer service because I've been burned by malfunctioning products before. I received a replacement product in addition to some financial compensation.
I'm sure that's the sort of thing legal handles, and therefore customer service must have a way of contacting legal.
I think it's beyond reasonable to expect contacting the customer-facing representatives of a company should be sufficient for almost all matters.
You work in marketing. I do not, but I assume that marketing folks view communication as a good thing. After all, your job is to present your company's message and get responses from potential customers. Communication equals success. Thus, it makes complete sense to you that that customer service would be a catch-all for any incoming communication.
Consider instead someone who works in legal. For them, in almost all cases like this one, avoiding communication is a victory. Status quo is preserved if people go away, and ignoring people often makes them go away. That department absolutely does not want to ensure that customer service faithfully passes on all relevant communication. The more CS is a black hole, the better.
You need to distinguish between these two types of inbound communication. You repeatedly make statements like "it's beyond reasonable to expect," "If your customer service can't figure out how to escalate legal issues, that sounds like the fault of the company," and "Someone trying to contact the organization should not have to divine the nature of the beast." These statements might make sense in the context of a potential customer communication where both sides want to make a deal. But they sound clueless, entitled, and whiny in the context of an inbound communication from a non-customer and potential litigant like OP. Do you think Netflix cares that they didn't make it beautiful and seamless for randos to obtain compensation for copyright infringement? And do you think they care that you're so very disappointed in them?
It's odd to be frustrated at a company for avoiding or delaying the rents and friction of running a company. That's what they're supposed to do. In fact, a shareholder would be frustrated at a company that didn't do this. I doubt you're interested in taking advice from me, but since this frustration is a running theme in your posts, and because most people want less frustration in their lives, you might consider a more nuanced expectation about how companies should behave -- especially when your current expectation leads you to make irrational and self-defeating choices like contacting customer support instead of legal for a legal matter.
http://fortune.com/2017/09/20/stranger-things-bar/
I really think Netflix try to be the good guys and will handle this VHS matter pretty well. (once it gets to the right person)
Why can't we program our <something> support departments to act on information they're given? Why do we need to program these departments like they're half AI zombies?
Think of it like getting pulled over for speeding -- Everyone knows you did something wrong. But when the officer says, "Do you know how fast you were going?", do you respond with "Yes, officer, I was going 31 in a 25. Please give me my ticket now." No, you admit no wrong and hope they don't push it so you get away with it.
You’re analogy with the police office is a bad one for this example. Image you dumped another can without you realizing that. Fortunately for you, the other person does not call the police immediately. Instead, they manage to track you down and send you a letter asking you to pay for the damages. You can assert that this did in fact happen because their paint is on your car. This is in your best interest. You really don’t want to get charged for a hit and run. You are glad he did not go to the police, pay the damages and send a nice apology letter. Netflix probably did not know about the copyright infringement. It probably was made by a design company. Netflix should have know whom the VGA cassette originates from, but they did not and this is unfortunate but can happen. It is in netflix’s best internet to go away silently.
What I believe had happened is that he was sent to the wrong department. That department saw the email and though it was not authentic/a fake to quickly export money or baseless. A company must get a lot of emails: “you owe me money because xyz”.
That is my point. It is their best interest (although not best ethics, arguably) to ignore and deflect such people unless they take further action to prove they are serious. At that point, someone from their legal department would certainly take a look, and in this specific case, act on it. I agree with your statements once someone has shown they are serious. But a call to CS and a couple emails don't yet put this guy in that category, despite his totally legitimate complaint.
(And yeah, you are right that my analogy is bad.)
As demonstrated previously with the C&D to the Stranger Things themed pop-up, Netflix's in-house counsel are reasonable and PR savvy.
I'd hold off the mob comparisons for a little while.
If your cs reps don’t have this, your organization is running a big risk. Consider one party recording laws.
Let me refer you to legal should be a first day training thing.
The author didn’t handle this optimally and neither did the CSR. Should they need to? I’d prefer to live in a world where each party does their best to approach a happy resolution in spite of mistakes. In this case whoever reads the PR mailbox dropped the ball.
Address? No. Redirect/escalate to the proper channels? Most definitely.
Yes, he obviously cares enough to write a big blog post; he shouldn't have done that, instead he should've gotten a solicitor and gone through the proper legal channels. If he's lucky he'd get a regular one-time payment for use of the pictures. If he's really lucky those would end up a bit higher than the cost for the legal procedures.
This is very simple. There are plenty of example online. It would be roughly "I created, and own, these images. You've used them without permission, for a commercial use. You understand the importance of IP and copyright, and you defend your own rights. I'd like you to buy a licence at my standard rate of $X, plus a Y% uplift for commercial use by an organisation that should know better. I expect payment within 28 days."
When you're interacting with big corporations you need to speak their language. We see this in claims of copyright infringement, but also in open source projects that don't get donations from big corps - because they don't offer the "order, invoice, payment" cycle that corporations expect.
He didn't. He posted it on HN, which is clearly the wrong path.
1) Apologised upfront for giving bad news;
2) Pointed out the clearly unorthodox nature of contacting the wrong communication channel (tech support for a non-tech support problem);
3) Pointed out the correct communication channel;
4) Provided information of what to send to the channel in item 3); and
5) Gave the address of where to send the claim.
Can you tell me which part was condescending? As far as I see it, the parent commenter when above and beyond; they went out of their way to help.
The 2nd sentence. "Seriously, ...?"
Specifically, re: 2), the way that was pointed out was condescending, as is your implication that contacting support - which is one of the few publicly visible contact points - is "clearly" "unorthodox".
I can't argue against having that part in there -- I wasn't personally offended I, and it's important to give what you write your own voice -- but it is good to know the kind of reactions that your writing will illicit.
(Just a side story -- I once posted a comment on a forum that was entirely meant to be sarcastic. Someone missed my sarcasm and responded with what turned out to be valuable information. Since then, I've tried my best to strip anything that might be unnecessarily negative out of my comments, but I'm sure stuff slips through....)