A photographer who claims Getty Images has been using her work without permission is suing the image library for $1 billion. So in response Highsmith and her lawyers filed a suit on July 25th in a New York District Court and made their case crystal clear. PetaPixel created a copy of the documents on Scribd.
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Ars Technica says the Highsmith images had disappeared from Getty’s website by Wednesday, though they remained on the website of defendant Alamy, a British company.
An exhibit to the lawsuit, dated 1991, says Highsmith permits the general public to reproduce the photos freely, as long as credit is given to the library’s Carol M. Highsmith Collection.
That’s exactly what happened in the case of photographer Carol Highsmith, who found herself the recipient of a copyright infringement notice by Getty images, via its legal representative, License Compliance Services (LCS). It stated that they had seen images represented by Alamy being used by Highsmith’s company, and that she did not have a valid license to use the images.
Torrent Freak reports that in December, the This is America! If granted, this could put Getty’s total liability well over $1 billion. It went on to explain that although the infringement may have been unintentional, copyright law still gave Alamy the right to seek compensation.
The disputed image, below, is of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and an installation called “Shuttlecocks” in Kansas City, Mo. After paying a fee the customer then has the right to use the appropriate images in their own publications.
She donated her catalog of pictures of American landscapes and architecture to the Library of Congress in ’09, but discovered the agency was charging for the snaps when it tried to make Highsmith pay $120 to use her own work online.
Are Getty Images and LCS one and the same?
A Getty rep told Page Six, “We are reviewing the complaint”.
“If that is not possible, we will defend ourselves vigorously”, the agency said. Any enquiries regarding that matter should be directed to Alamy; however, as soon as the plaintiff contacted LCS, LCS acted swiftly to cease its pursuit with respect to the image provided by Alamy and notified Alamy it would not pursue this content.
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If Highsmith’s billion-dollar demand seems high, it’s because she’s asking for three times the normal damages, which would be $25,000 for each violation, or $46,887,500.
