Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

People in this thread keep claiming that because it is public domain, they can do whatever they want with it including license it, which is not true. They can certainly sell it, but a license is a legal instrument that grants usage rights, and Getty cannot grant such rights. To claim to do so is fraud.

Is that settled in a court of law?

It isn't at all obvious to me that is the case.

The linked article explicitly disagrees with that interpretation - because Getty doesn't make any claim what the license is: Getty and/or Getty US offers to let the user “Purchase a license” to a NASA photo of Saturn for $499.00 with “standard editorial rights”

Techdirt makes the point: it can't sell "copyright licenses," as that is a misrepresentation over the rights that Getty Images has -- but if it wants to try to get people to pay for stuff that is otherwise available for free, that's Getty's prerogative. and that seems a reasonable interpretation.

Indeed and other interpretation would imply some kind of negative copyright exists over the work (because it is restricting what you can do with it), and elsewhere in this thread it is pointed out that there is precedent for avoiding that[1]

Adobe also claims that Fonts are Software. Because most Fonts wouldn't be copyrightable beyond the Name of the Font because they lack innovation. Software, on the other hand, doesn't require innovation.

Shouldn't the letter forms in the font be copyrightable? How are those different from a (copywritable) drawing?

Not everything is copyrightable. You certainly can't draw a circle and claim copyright infringement to any other circle. So it depends on the Font. Is it really copyrightable if you take a public domain typewriter font and convert it to a sans serif font. I don't think it is enough.

Most (good) fonts—even seemingly simple ones—take months if not years of work to build. I don't think your circle comparison is apt.

I don't see how this is relevant.

> Is that settled in a court of law?

Yes, of course.

As said a licence is what the owner of some exclusive rights issues to grant someone else some of those rights.

> Yes, of course.

In a particular test case?

The whole article is all about how this layman's intuition about the licensing situation in this case is not how you'd think.

> These images are in the public domain. No one is required to pay Getty and/or Getty US a penny to copy and use them. And Getty has no right to sell copyright licenses for them, as it has done and is doing.

> The first sentence is true, the second, not so much.

What do you know that the author doesn't? Is there a particular test case that settled it?

There doesn't need to be a test case, because it's written in the law. A license is defined as a "transfer of rights", you can't transfer rights that you don't have.

But that's exactly what the article is saying isn't as intuitive as you think it is.

> it's not at all clear that it's against the law

The author (what's his authority, by the way?) agrees, though:

> Well, it can't sell "copyright licenses," as that is a misrepresentation over the rights that Getty Images has -- but if it wants to try to get people to pay for stuff that is otherwise available for free, that's Getty's prerogative.

His point is that he does not think that Getty was selling licences. However Getty's past behaviour (and I'm sure their own website since I'm sure that the T&C and the licence are attached to any sale) suggests that this is exactly what they were doing:

> 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.

And yes, knowingly selling licences for rights you do not have is against the law. If you think it's not then I'm happy to sell you a licence to fish in the River Dee...

So can you point at the precedent, please?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com