Why BuzzFeed Should Pay My Invoice For Copyright Infringement
revdancatt.com
revdancatt.com
When Toyota's ad agency Saatchi was confronted about the misuse, they offered a flat fee of $500 (if I recall correctly ) for each photo. Several of the photographers took the deal. A group of around 10 of us hired a lawyer and settled for much more (withholding amount was part of the deal) per infringement.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright...
[2] http://www.ipinbrief.com/whyitsdifficultpredictstatutorydama...
HOWEVER -- I think it would be REALLY fun to write for them -- I think the challenge of trying to figure out what's hot on the internet and what has people's attention and then trying to get as much traffic as possible would be a ridiculously fun daily challenge.
Would I ever actually consider doing it? Not a chance in hell
What is author's contribution in this article? http://www.buzzfeed.com/samir/drug-addict-robs-a-store-and-a...
Or this one:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/diesels-new-ad-campaign-feat...
Ha a post contributed by a community member:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilys123/15-signs-you-did-a-musical...
Or the cliched magazine cover story:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/23-cringeworthy-magaz...
Or let's see what is hot on imgur: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/obama-asks-the-hill-to-...
But looks like brain does some research:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/15-celebrities-you-neve...
It's a long-established business model that works. Just look at food grain.
Be happy your amateur photo got viewed by millions of people, go outside and take more photos.
As a practical matter you can't own public, unencrypted arrangements of bits. All attempts to enforce ownership of public, unencrypted arrangements of bits are forms of rent-seeking or forms of begging or, at the pleasant best, forms of politely asking other people to go along with your view of the world for a while.
Maybe I just didn't understand what you were trying to say...
I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect the "you can't own" portion of his statement was a point of possession and direct control, not necessarily law.
exratione, please let me know if I'm misrepresenting your position here at all, and I'll correct my post. (I'm intentionally leaving out my opinion, just trying to clarify yours. :))
Low-cost is not no-cost, and digital copies made by someone else are actually no-cost.
> Low-cost is not no-cost, and digital copies made by someone else are actually no-cost.
They're not actually no-cost, it's just that the costs are indirect so it's easy to lose track of them. For example, I'd be interested to see someone make and use a digital copy without a computer and electricity, both of which cost money. Distribution takes an Internet connection and servers, which cost money too.
The raw resources for bottles are abundant, but it requires labor to make and transport them. Labor is not free, so bottled water remains scarce. If robot swarms will refill and restock bottles for you, then you can take one off a shelf.
>They're not actually no-cost, it's just that the costs are indirect
None of those come out of the pocket of the person being copied. I guess I was too unclear about specifying made by someone else. When we're talking about a '''theft''' scenario, the burden imposed on the person being '''stolen''' from is very important, and when it comes to digital copies they are uninvolved in the action and have no costs at all.
When you take a bottle of water, the cost of inventory (which captures the entirety of the amortized cost of production) is less than half of the harm to the shop keeper, because the markup on bottled water is well over 50%. The primary harm is the revenue the shop keeper will forego because he cannot sell that bottle.
In the digital realm, using a copyrighted piece of content without permission causes the copyright owner--who did have to invest in the original creation--to forego revenue as well.
With bottled water, I want to count all the costs to the manufacturer of making a specific bottle: materials, wages, property taxes, equipment wear, etc.
With digital content, I want to count all the costs to the manufacturer of making a specific copy: none.
I'm not saying that unlimited copying of work is fair, I'm just saying that there is a qualitative difference in scarcity.
I don't really want to argue about what hurts more. I'll just point out that using nothing, or purchasing a license to work A, or purchasing a license to work B, can all be looked at as causing the creators of A and/or B to forego revenue.
The difference is that water bottle manufacturing is centralized, while digital content "manufacturing" is distributed--each person "manufactures" the digital content on their personal electronic device. That is, they use a device and energy that they paid for, to turn the IP into something that is physically consumable (sound, images, etc.)
So the concept of scarcity is different too, but it doesn't go away. There is still a physical cost to digital content, it's just unbundled from the act of creation.
You could not give infinite amounts of digital content to everyone on Earth, because you'd need to first give everyone an electronic device that can store and play it, the power to operate that device, and a means of digital distribution (network connectivity or shippable media). There are physical and cost limits on all of that.
Digital content only looks free and infinite if you ignore the required infrastructure.
Basically, since people already have computers and power for them to do things completely unrelated to getting this media, the 'cost' of a copy is in the same range as asking for one. Tap your phone against someone else's and you're done, for example. And if you think asking is a real cost then you've defined things so that it's impossible to be past scarcity, so I reject such a definition.
But it should. Copying is not theft, and shouldn't be treated as such by law, even though it is now. IP is just wrong, we just haven't adjusted to that truth yet; we will eventually.
I view IP as a useful tool that allows content creators to earn a livelihood from their work. If you oppose IP and support legal file sharing, you forfeit the right to complain about the quality of TV, movies, video games, etc.
Content creators should not be using law to create markets that can't exist naturally. If they can't find a way to fund their work in a world where distribution is effectively free, then their work isn't worth paying for. That distribution used to be a profit center is a historical accident that's been fixed by the Internet.
You cannot prevent copying, and copying does not take something from you, it is not theft, you have not lost any property, anything that can be digitally copied has no right to be called property to begin with. It's a legal fiction created to manipulate people into associating copying to theft when nothing has actually been stolen.
I oppose all forms of IP, the world would be vastly better without it. Patents were not created for inventors, they were created to make that knowledge public.
When a law attempts to prevent something that cannot be prevented and that a majority of the population will do anyway; that law is wrong.
IP has created an environment where people expect to work once and then rent seek and be paid over and over again rather than just for the time they worked; this is wrong and artificial and leads to disparity of wealth distribution where people live forever off the work of others.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection."
Lets pretend that every computer connected to the internet today starts randomly generating images. Lets optimistically say they can generate 1 million per second each, and optimistically assume there are 3 billion such computers. For any particular image as described above, these computers have an expected time to generate the image of around 2^24 years. That's almost the age of the universe so far. Increase the image size to 3x3 and those computers will effectively never generate the image (expected time something like 2^75 times the age of the universe).
Those bits in an image aren't arbitrary. Do not trivialize the importance of digital content by equating a picture to an "arrangement of bits." Even a seemingly very small arrangement of bits is extremely special.
http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the-...
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/03/buzzfeeds-ha...
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/06/...
Now there's an interesting startup idea.
Unfortunately, it's easy to thwart. (just transform the image slightly)
EDIT: Even a photo filter might not succeed if it did a homogenous effect across the pixels.
I have to find that algorithm someday.
[1] http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/index.php?display=1&mode=play&o...
If you don't take steps to strip out typical metadata, such is indeed already present, in EXIF and IPTC fields.
I agree, it could be a startup.
http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to-m...
The problem is that the people you most want to follow this are the least likely to check IPTC metadata first.
jhead -purejpg in.jpg out.jpg
Put another way: Buzzfeed could trivially put a system into place to scan images to prevent mistakes. It would be a much harder problem to reliably stop dishonest editors – at that point, it'd be better to simply use something like TinEye or Google Image Search.
Although the page you link to is a great resource, it's a sad fact that there's no metadata for 'Cost of 3-month nonexclusive license: $60 per million impressions. Remit-to: my_account@paymentprocessor.com'.
All sorts of restrictions on usage and what-all else, but no fields for price or payment method...the only two things that a potential buyer actually needs to transact business.
/facepalm
Licensing is a pain in the ass because it's not automated; it's not automated because many artists are scared of pricing (and I say this as an artist). They're reluctant to stick a price tag on their work out of the fear that they'll pick one that's too low or too high and as a result there's no standardized way to license a an interesting piece of art you stumble across, other than by contacting the apparent copyright holder and trying to enter into negotiations, which is so time-consuming that it's often not economically efficient for the would-be licensee. It's cheaper to assume the business risk of occasionally infringing than to license IP without any standardized framework for doing so - especially for articles of this kind that are thrown together in the space of an hour or two. A URL is not helpful because (as with this example) we have no idea whether it will provide a mechanism to perform a license transaction or not.
What I'm proposing is adding term metadata that allow the information about pricing to travel with the picture like any other piece of metadata. It's kind of ridiculous to have all sorts of metadata codifying the creator/copyright owners ownership interest in the IP but not to include any on what that interest is valued at. If such term metadata were to become standardized in similar fashion to the Creative Commons licensing, then artists would be able to sell more of their work with less transaction overhead, while licensees would be able to buy with the same convenience that consumers enjoy.
This is a fundamentally naive view of the problem: the rates will vary over time and based on the usage and photographers will charge more for the front-page of a major magazine than their kid's PTA newsletter.
The solution is, again, a URL which allows all of those details be conveyed without trying to cram a soon-to-be-stale copy into the photo metadata.
"I'd love it if it remained 'pretty challenging' to identify who owned what on the web, because our whole business model would crater if we had to pay for the content we rip off."
http://www.useplus.com/aboutplus/system.asp
Though I can't say it's gained much traction.
"Theft" works, here.
Theft has a meaning which involves "taking with an intent to deprive the owner of their rightful possession". Sure I understand you when you misuse the word, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
My response to this is to say the OP is using extortion to squeeze money out of Buzzfeed with the threat of expensive lawsuits.
That makes him sound like a real bastard doesn't it? Because it isn't really extortion, it is a legitimate attempt to settle a legal dispute. My answer is... let's use words as accurately as we can, rather than twisting them to make our point.
Because Disney is sure as shit related to the first.
The reasons they may be hated for that don't bear much relationship with copyright infringement which focuses almost exclusively on newly released things that would be copyright regardless of Disney's lobbying.
You are the one attempting to insinuate that only people who use The Pirate Bay object to their perversion of copyright laws and discussion. Multiple alternative reasons to be angry with them have now been presented to you, but you just claim they are unrelated because you assert that the real reason is that they are just interested in pirating recent things. In discarding these alternative reasons because they they don't mesh with your already unsupported assertion, you are begging the question.
People are in fact upset with the MPAA/RIAA for their abuse of terminology and all that it facilitates: the corruption of copyright laws, weaponized lawsuits, and the shackling of (frankly ancient) culture.
Pretend that people are only upset with their abuse of terminology because they want to pirate things all you want, but you are dead wrong.
I think that people pirate primarily opportunistically. Some of these people try to justify their piracy by saying they hate the MPAA/RIAA and pirate for ideological reasons, other pirates do not.
People, sometimes people who pirate, sometimes not, hate the MPAA/RIAA for a wide variety of reasons that have been beaten to death in this thread.
I don't dispute people are upset with the MPAA/RIAA, just that it has very little to do with Disney or material that shoulda/coulda/woulda been public domain at various times in the last century.
Centuries before Disney was created the copyright length was still decades longer than the age of material people primarily pirate.
You cannot strike out the possibility of non-pirating critics with evidence of what pirates prefer to pirate, since all critics just being pirates is your unsupported assertion.
1. Critics are pirates.
2. Pirates pirate new material. Pirates are not concerned
with old material.
3. Critics are not concerned with old material.
RIAA/MPAA mission is simple:
They want to own all of the content, control the ways to distribute that content, that content to be used only as they say, forever.
Its not that they react to being ripped off, its that they react more like Los Zetas than law abiding shop-keepers when they do.
Rabid public adoption of music and video piracy is most certainly a function of the public's perceptions re: price/value and anger at blatant collusion on the part of record labels to inflate prices.
Perhaps they aren't hated for it, but they sure are ridiculed for it. "You wouldn't steal a car"->"You wouldn't download a car" anyone?
By focusing on the infinitely reproducible media (which cannot, strictly speaking, be stolen) the RIAA/MPAA made themselves look like idiots. But just because they failed to correctly identify what was being stolen does not mean that no theft was taking place. Focus on the money not changing hands (which obviously can't be duplicated) and the picture becomes a lot clearer.
Edit: Downvotes? I guess the truth stings, especially when the logic is airtight.
1. Defaulting on a contract is, generally speaking, a civil matter and has nothing to do with theft.
2. There is no contract here, implied or explicit.
3. Buzzfeed haven't physically taken anything from the OP intending to permanently deprive him of it.
You seem to have received a few downvotes unfortunately, but I assume that is because your post is mainly bad metaphors supporting a faulty argument.
Edit: line breaks.
I said "check" not "contract" for a reason. Specifically, because it creates an obligation to pay that does not require a separate contract. Copyright law works in the same way, in that it creates an obligation to pay that does not depend on an additional contract between parties.
Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule. That is to say, copies that can be made without triggering a corresponding obligation. These are gathered under the Fair Use provision of the law.
There are also criminal and civil violations within copyright. But the larger point is that refusing to pay money owed is very much a form of deprivation.
Theft has a specific meaning which you should learn before you make broad, sweeping, incorrect statements about it.
Even if your analogy had any relevance to this copyright dispute, it doesn't follow that theft has occurred. Giving a bad cheque is not theft. Giving a bad cheque with a certain intention may amount to fraud.
If your friend convinces your girlfriend to leave you for him, it is common to say he "stole" her from you.
A sports team that wins from behind at the last minute against a supposedly better team is often said to have "stolen" the game.
If a restaurant owner paid a waiter at another restaurant to spy on the kitchen to figure out a sauce recipe, and then put that sauce on his menu, many would say the recipe was "stolen" [1].
Falling in love is often described as having your heart "stolen".
If someone bugs your office and hears you practicing your pitch for a startup incubator, and then they apply and pitch your idea before you, using the points from your pitch, most would say he "stole" your idea and your pitch.
[1] This may not be such a good example, because the recipe could be a trade secret, and "theft" might then be legally correct usage instead of just colloquial usage since misappropriating trade secrets is actually called "theft of trade secrets" in some jurisdictions. For instance, see 18 USC 1832, "Theft of Trade Secrets" [2].
The above is the thing I find most amazing. If you are compiling a list so that you can one day produce "10 neat things I learned" etc. then the last thing you should be doing is putting that info anywhere on the internet. The saying that comes to mind is "possession is 9/10th of the law".
By posting it online, multiple small parties will potentially take it, spread it around, and you will never have enough legal resources to police it. Effectively it is gone forever.
The saying was never really that - only through bastardization and a gradual veering away. In fact, it was that "possession is nine /points/ of the law".
1st - the law is obviously on his side. 2nd - he is the little guy in the case which for me matters 3rd - he is not looking at extreme damages but is making a small claim. 4th - it seems to me that he is mostly annoyed for not being credited properly and being just dismissed/made fool of by the company statements.
And lets be honest - whatever a person views should be for non commercial infringement (mine are extremely lax) and sampling/transformation (the author should be entitled to part of the earnings, but should not have the ability to stop the work from being created or distributed) if you make money out of someone's IP he is in his right to say Fuck you, pay me! for some part of that amount.
I totally get him, but I think the way in he expressed his belief came up as just whiny.
Also I believe the problem is with copyright laws and not with BuzzFeed. They are not selling that image, they are just illustrating their content and the same article without his image would have exactly the same value.
But beyond all, what pisses me off the most is the blue background on those link, good lord!
Actually, even if it provided no value whatsoever, even if Buzzfeed did not make a profit off of it, this would still be infringement and the photographer is entitled to remuneration.
I never said the guy was wrong. I said I think this is silly and he should just move on.
Bear that in mind - if this is accurate (and the guy once worked on Flickr), then linking to the download page avoids bumping the photo's view count up, which might indicate to the photographer that the photo's been featured on a highly trafficked page.
Linking to the wrong page sounds like they were probably on that page to download the image, and when they went to get the attribution they just happened to have that tab open. Most likely laziness, not malice.
My god it must be nice to have something like this actually be a problem in your life and make you mad.
Yes, if BuffPo were to agree some payment for photo or writing reuse, they'd have much greater outgoings. However, they'd also then become legitimate channels for syndication, rather than incidental leeches.
I do profess some grim amusement in noticing that serial infringers - the Daily Mail comes prominently to mind - are never punished with anything greater than a nominal fee for whatever work they've lifted. Given these are outfits that are entirely based around profit (rather than simply linking to them in a personal journal, for example, with no money involved), surely the consequences for copyright infringement ought to be amplified, rather than diminished into inconsequentiality?
Imagine a BuzzFeed that shared the ad revenue with the creators of the photos involved. It wouldn't lead to anyone's early retirement, I'm sure, but we have the means to make such happen, very easily. Shouldn't such sites be working toward helping creators be rewarded for what fuels those very sites?
http://cdixon.org/2012/07/24/buzzfeeds-strategy/comment-page...
Plus most of the time if you approach a photographer first you're going to get a much better deal than when you've decided that licensing it properly wasn't important.
Definitely not saying you necessarily deserve nothing, but what amount did you put in your invoice? Want to know what you think the value is
Whether or not it's "written" somewhere doesn't mean that there isn't a stereotype as to how 'holy' men (it's always men...) should behave. Witness the confusion when Westerners got into Indian religions in a big way, then couldn't quite square the way some gurus shagged themselves silly - 'holy' men were 'supposed' to be celibate, if not in actuality, then at least in behaviour. It isn't the done thing to have your Anglican priest bragging about his last shagging session with his wife, for example.
Or is the author using 'reverend' as a joke appellation, without seriously being one?
Section 14, "Unlawful Birth Control Methods"
Search the document for "contraception".
1) Koran - [4:148] GOD does not like the utterance of bad language, unless one is treated with gross injustice. GOD is Hearer, Knower.
2) Talmud - [Ketubot 8b] Even a heavenly decree for seventy years of good can be reversed if one perverts his mouth with improper speech.
3) Bible - [Ephesians 5:4] Neither should there be vulgar speech, foolish talk, or coarse jesting – all of which are out of character – but rather thanksgiving. 5:5 For you can be confident of this one thing: 8 that no person who is immoral, impure, or greedy (such a person is an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
4) A gentleman has no skill in trifles, but has strength for big task: the vulgar are skilled in trifles, but have no strength for big tasks. - Confucius, Analects, c.400 b.c.
5) Buddism - "Right Speech" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_speech#Right_speech
Note that I'm not sure where to look for other religions of the world.
Huh?
How about I grew up on the other side of the world, in a completely different culture, where we don't care for words like 'denomination' and 'ordained'.
Welcome to the internet, which as you don't seem to understand, is global.
So while I was curious before, now I just think you're a jerk, and I'm rereading your post in a different light (the jerk that's always got a chip on his shoulder light). Have a blessed day, night, evening, morning or whatever it is where ever you are.
* Also note that I didn't comment on your use of the swear words ... it's pretty common and I can filter it out and/or understand the exclamatory nature of the use.