They have some bots crawling around the web and sending out automated letters then to people who they think need to license their photos. I fucked around with the bit and wasted its energy since it came to my territory, at least 4 years ago it wasn't very smart. I just told them point blank to fuck off, probably they go only after American customers since they are in the legislation area to threaten.
So you stole someone else's property and told them to fuck off? And you expect praise for this? Even if you hate Getty, they're a platform that resells images individual photographers take.
Edit: Reply showed me I was wrong. Leaving the comment up so the chain makes sense.
They talked about fucking with a bot that caught them infringing copyright because they knew they'd be hard to hunt down. Copyright theft is (currently) theft.
Did you create this account just to leave that comment? Why? What did you think would happen as a result?
Thank you. I looked the issue up and learned that legally copyright infringement is distinct from theft. I still think the term is a good inexact colloquial approximation.
However, I couldn't find anything to support your assertion that copyright violation is a breach of contract. It doesn't make sense: breach of contract requires an agreed upon contract to be breached.
Also, cite for the idea that copyright law hurts the poorest the most? Haven't seen that before.
The contract part is probably poor wording on my part. The contract is between the government at the public in that there is no such thing as a natural protections against copying. So the government enforces an artificial period of time of sole ownership of something that otherwise cannot be owned.
Single mom was sued for millions of dollars years ago because she put 40 songs (or some low number) on the Mule/Donkey file sharing network. She lost in court. If a multinational corporation got nailed for the same, they would have either made a deal, settled for a portion or just paid the loss. She could have stolen (theft) 40 cds from a store and the fines/punishment would have been miniscule.
The percentage of income to punishment ratio is a travesty of justice. The imbalance is in the sheer overwhelming destruction of the law's punishments on those that infringe that are not rich and powerful.
Consider the photographers that had their photos "copied" by Getty and used internationally. Or Facebook using a photographers photo without any compensation. What happened to Facebook and Getty? Nothing, (maybe some bad press?) because individuals can't afford to defend their copyrights.
Edit: I am glad you looked into this, it's worth a deeper study at least once in a person's life.
Thanks for the detailed response. I'm not convinced by the natural law argument because everything, including property law, falls apart if you look at it that way.
I hadn't learned about either story, though, and your point that multinationals just negotiate it away is something I hadn't thought through.
The "natural law" argument can be demonstrated in a couple of stories. Years ago there was a very strong copyright on sheet music in the US. (1800s some time) And sheet music was kept very secure. But then competing composers/musicians hired people that could hear the music and write down the sheet music from memory.
(ie, simply expressing or performing an idea and having other people experience it means it can be copied.)
There was another copyright battle in the early US over fonts. To this day you can copy any font Adobe or anyone else makes, because you can't copyright the alphabet. You can only copyright the code that makes the font. You can make identical fonts for every Adobe font legally, and they can look identical as long as your underlying font code is different. Consider the laws on fonts before there was "code" to display a font?
There's stories about coat buttons and other odds things as well. Laurence Lessig gave a talk on the history of copyright a long time ago that is incredibly insightful on this topic. (I can't find that exact talk on Youtube any more) But one point that was interesting is that without copyright laws, originally nothing was copyrighted, but today it's believed/taught that everything is.
Edit: I appreciate your willingness to look into this topic, and I feel I may have come across harshly in my first reply to you. I hope you didn't take it to badly. I am trying to tone down my internet voice.
