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Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

Unless you have this stamp [1] .. since its been discontinued and story went viral, unused unstamped sheet of 16 got sold for $1000 on ebay.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-postal-service-statue-l...

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I'm confused why the USPS has to pay up $3.5M in this case. They purchased the image from Getty Images I assume with the proper license for printing/distribution. However, since this is the statue in Vegas it's not in public domain? How does that work? Are you not allowed to legally photograph the Vegas statue?

Does this mean if the USPS wanted to create stamps for the major cities of the US say LA, Chicago, NY and were to use pictures of Santa Monica Pier, Sears/Willis Tower, and Empire State building that they can't purchase pictures from Getty Images and would need permission from the owners of those properties? Also what stops me from suing Google or Zillow for taking a street view shot of my home and claiming copyright infringement on monetizing google maps / Zillow listings with a picture of my home?

The artist that sold the images to Getty did not have the appropriate property release, Getty was made aware, and Getty made the US Post Office aware. Without this property release the artist's photograph, and the stamps are a derivative work of the statue because it is a work of art. They continued to use the image commercially to sell stamps, knowing that they did not have the appropriate release for years after the fact, selling nearly 5 billion stamps with this image. I expect the $3.5m judgement will be challenged though, the case has been ongoing for 5 years, and it is unusually high when you consider the actual economic loss of the artist who made the statue.

>Does this mean if the USPS wanted to create stamps for the major cities of the US say LA, Chicago, NY and were to use pictures of Santa Monica Pier, Sears/Willis Tower, and Empire State building that they can't purchase pictures from Getty Images and would need permission from the owners of those properties?

A property release is not normally needed for buildings. In the US copyright for buildings viewable from the public is treated differently from copyright for statues or sculptures or other art. Also some of those are in the public domain because of their age, or because the architect did not register the copyright to the building. There are some cases where the trademark could also be an issue too, like for the Transamerica pyramid. It is generally not a problem for a photographer to get a property release before selling stock images for commercial use.

>Also what stops me from suing Google or Zillow for taking a street view shot of my home and claiming copyright infringement on monetizing google maps / Zillow listings with a picture of my home?

Google is not using the image commercially, and does not need a release from the architect or property owner to use the image. Whether or not they make money is not what determines commercial use or editorial use, and editorial use does not require a property release. In a newspaper that costs money it is OK to take a photo of Trump for a headline about him, and ok to use this next to an ad the newspaper is getting paid to publish, but not OK to use his photo as an endorsement for a product without a model release. Zillow generally gets your permission to use your images to sell your home when you upload them to a site that syndicates with zillow. For other uses where they are not selling your home, like showing the past sale price they would not need a property release. The architect would be the one with standing to sue under copyright law, to prevent others from making derivative works. If they did not register the copyright this is not practical because there are no actual damages, and they cannot collect statutory damages. The owner of the home could sue under right of publicity laws in some states if the image was used commercially. Historically but this has never applied to regular homes, and it would be rare to have meaningful damages. See Robinson v HSBC Bank USA

I really appreciate the time you took to put together that solid response! Definitely learned a lot. It makes a lot more sense now for why USPS is facing the $3.5M judgement since they were made aware of the license issue and continued with printing/distribution.

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