AFP Back To Claiming That Twitter's Terms Of Service Allow It To Take And Sell Anyone's Twitpic Photos
from the they-can't-be-serious dept
Two years ago, we wrote about one of the most bizarre copyright lawsuits we've ever heard of. News giant AFP (Agence France Presse) -- for reasons that I still cannot begin to comprehend -- decided to proactively sue a photographer, Daniel Morel, after it (AFP) had taken his photos (of the earthquake in Haiti) from TwitPic without permission, and distributed them for sale via Getty Images. So why did AFP sue? Because Morel contacted them upon discovering this, demanding lots of money. And what was AFP's reasoning? Well, it tried to claim that Twitter's terms of service allowed this. There were all sorts of problems with that idea. First of all, the photo was on Twitpic, not Twitter, and the two are different companies. But, more importantly, neither of the terms of service from Twitter nor Twitpic (AFP eventually figured out the difference) allowed AFP to do what it claims. The AFP appeared to deliberately misinterpret the terms of service, which simply give Twitpic the right to make use of the images -- but that does not extend to third parties automatically, which is what AFP implied.Oh, and did we mention that AFP itself has a history of copyright maximalism, including suing Google for merely linking to AFP stories, with AFP's headline showing in Google News?
And, while a judge eviscerated AFP's claims about TwitPic's license, it appears that AFP is back to relying on that as the crux of its legal argument.
And, it gets even worse. During discovery, Morel seems to have received a bunch of pretty damning evidence from AFP suggesting that the company knew all along what it was doing. There was the fact that AFP's director of photography for North and South America reached out to Morel prior to downloading the images. The same guy apparently copies other images from other sites. Multiple people seemed to suggest from the very beginning that they shouldn't use these photos -- including the Director of Photography at Getty, who pointed out that Morel regularly used rival photo agency Corbis. There was also some other damning evidence, including editing the copyright management info, and uploading the image under multiple names, and only issuing a kill notice on one name.
Oh yeah, and then there was the fact that someone inside the AFP sent an email saying:
Anyway, AFP got caught with a hand in the cookie jar and will have to pay.And this was before AFP decided to sue Morel. Perhaps the company should have just paid up in the first place.
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Filed Under: licensing, photography, tos
Companies: afp, getty images, twitpic, twitter
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One rule for the other.
Nothing wrong with copyright. Move along...
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AFP can't have it both ways
After all, it's only fair.
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ToS pretty clear
"All content uploaded to Twitpic is copyright the respective owners. The owners retain full rights to distribute their own work without prior consent from Twitpic. It is not acceptable to copy or save another user's content from Twitpic and upload to other sites for redistribution and dissemination. "
I don't see *any* reason how even laymen can misunderstand the situation, not to speak of an organization whose commercial purpose it is to use and license pictures in and out.
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Similarly, if you are rabidly anti-pirate, you are probably a thief.
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Re: ToS pretty clear
But you are absolutely correct. And I don't think AFP beliefs what they said in court over this. But merely hoped to confused the judge with it, smoke bomb tactic so to speak.
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Re: AFP can't have it both ways
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If you are homophobic, you are more likely than the average person to be gay.
If you are a large rights-holding corporation, you are definitely a thief.
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