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Comment by massysett | Hacker News Reader

This is sleazy how? Getty has done the work of looking at images and screening them and putting them in a catalog. No more sleazy than Red Hat or Canonical selling support for software it didn’t write. If people want free public domain images, they can search for them. Only problem is, that’s work! Getty did it for you.

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They are claiming copyright on the works something they don't own - even if you put something into the public domain you still can claim copyright - Getty can't go around licensing your copyright to others without your permission, much less demanding money because they claim that they own it.

What they can do is resell things in the public domain, what they can't do is shake people down for licensing fees

> The first one was brought by photographer Carol Highsmith, who sued Getty after Getty had sent a demand letter to her over her own images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress to be put into the public domain.

This is not sleazy? It's in the first paragraph, nearly the first sentence. They sent a demand letter to the one that actually took theses photographs.

This isn't true.

There are sites that have public domain images and google has easy to use tools that sort images by licensing types. I make art and when I do need a reference picture, I use these tools. Most folks can do these things easily.

What Getty images does is sleazy because it makes it so that some of the tools available won't show a picture. Getty is charging for it and licensing it. This is different than them doing the work - they are taking it away.

They can make them available through a paid portal, exactly like Red Hat or Canonical does with updates. But they can't license something that they does not own. Specially when they mix those images with others that they own and which they can sue you for large sums of money if you use them without license.

I can use CentOS workout pay dime to Red Hat.

* typo

No more sleazy than a beverage company taking free public tap water in mass and reselling it to the public...and serving threatening cease and desist letters for anyone who attempts to drink the public tap water for free alleging they don’t have such rights because the public tap water is owned by said company.

If RH/Canonical started attacking other distros and claiming that they owned the Linux kernel, they would (rightly) get smacked down as well.

The allegation is that they licensed public domain images, which is something obviously unlawful (and likely criminal if done knowingly) since they do not own the rights of a public domain image by definition.

If it is indeed work to find and catalogue those images then they are allowed to charge for access to that catalogue. But a public domain image cannot be licensed.

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