What To Do About CC License Violations?

An anonymous reader writes "In the past, I've seen my pictures used by big commercial companies despite the Creative Commons license that clearly limits them to non-commercial use. I just let it slide because a friend who's a lawyer says that all I can do is sue. They've ignored emails and comments. Today, I saw two other examples that show this is pretty rampant. These big commercial corporations are some of the most tech savvy publications around, but they just grabbed the image. One, BoingBoing, even reprinted the 'non-commercial' clause, warning others to stay away. But they've got their ads from Cheerios, HP and Mazda running alongside. Does anyone care that we've gone to all this trouble to create new, more flexible licenses? Does it even matter when very smart people just flip the bird to the license? Is the only alternative to sue? I wouldn't mind asking for $150k and settling for $1 for each copy made, but that seems a bit crazy. I hate to type out DMCA notices but their attitude is that only uncool people complain about this and I should be happy about the publicity. Then they can be happy about not sharing their ad revenue with artists or photographers. What can I do?" Update: 08/30 18:39 GMT by T : (Very belated; mea culpa.) Cory Doctorow writes: "The anonymous submitter is not the creator of the photo. The creator of that photo is Jennifer Trant, a friend and colleague of mine who has no trouble with my use of her photo. I have just gotten off the phone with her and confirmed that she did not submit the story and also that she is happy to have this photo on Boing Boing." The photo has since been added back to BoingBoing.

Send them a bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Invoice them. If they don't pay, sue them.

DMCA?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This sounds like one of those situations where a DMCA takedown would work...

Wired, having y'know, actual printed copies and stuff, could probably be intimidated into an actual settlement more easily...

Why ask?

[bunratty]

Why ask about it on Slashdot? We'll all say information wants to be free and we don't believe in imaginary property. Oh, wait, you said big corporations are ripping off your stuff? OFF WITH THEIR HEADS1!!11!!1!

If you really care, sue

[Joe Mucchiello]

If you don't sue, who will? Perhaps the EFF can help.

Here's what you do

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Send a DMCA notice.
2. They take it down, you DON'T sue, you DON'T get any money
3. Case closed.

or
1. Send a DMCA notice.
2. They don't take it down.
3. Sue.
4. Lose money on legal fees
5. They take it down. You still don't get any money.

DONT EXPECT MONEY!

Re:Send them a bill

[Fwipp]

They would sue you in a heartbeat if they thought they could make a dollar from it. Don't let them get away with hypocrisy.

Shoe's on the other foot

[Cereal Box]

So in the examples listed, are the authors making any money off the image...? If so, no harm done right? Because when software/movies/music/etc. are pirated for non-financial gain, it's no big deal. At least that's what I've heard on /.

Re:Why ask?

[mwvdlee]

Information doesn't want to be free.
Some people want other people's information to be free, but that's about as far as it goes.

If you're not going to defend a license...

[mdm-adph]

don't bother using it? IANAL, but isn't that how stuff like trademarks work? If you don't defend it, you're giving away the right to use it?

Re:If you really care, sue

[snookerhog]

If you don't pay the lawyers, who will? Perhaps EFF can pay the lawyers.

There fixed that for you.

The sad truth is that like any other agreement or contract, it is only worth as much as you are willing to pay your lawyer.

Re:If you're not going to defend a license...

[maxume]

In general, people that use Creative Commons licenses are trying not to live in the Everybody's-a-Dick-iverse.

Re:Why ask?

[DarkKnightRadick]

big corp or indy web developer, if his stuff is getting ripped off, sue sue sue if they won't be polite.

Re:Reprint It

[kevinNCSU]

The "vendor" (it's a blog) isn't telling people to stay away from it, it's literally linked back to that dude's photostream and describes the license which means the vendor thinks they're following the license and doesn't think their blog is commercial use despite the ads. And he probably hasn't gotten a response back from the guy because he emailed him about a blog post that is titled Gone Fishin because the dude literally fucking left to go camping in the woods and included a photo of a hammock. Give me a break.

Re:If you're not going to defend a license...

[EvanED]

IANAL, but isn't that how stuff like trademarks work?

Trademarks work that way, but copyright doesn't.

Send them an invoice...

[(H)elix1]

The obvious thing would be to send them an invoice for a commercial license to your asset. Odds are, accounting will be more than happy to process it. No need to sue, or threaten to... Hell, you might just snag yourself a customer, if you are not careful for other assets too.

Re:If you're not going to defend a license...

[AdmiralXyz]

You're missing the point. It's not about "being nice"; if you were really being nice you'd just release it into the public domain. If you're not willing to enforce the terms of a license, then it's the same as not using one. You can moan, "But I'm using Creative Commons!" all you want, but unless you sue, from the corporation's perspective it's the same as if the material had been public domain, since they're not seeing any consequences. Submitter is trying to have it both ways, all of the protections of copyright/licenses with none of the effort. It doesn't work that way.

Re:Very annoying

[Hatta]

Even worse, it's always the big companies that could actually afford a to pay for whatever rights necessary that dont, in my experience. Very sloppy business practices...

Obviously. You don't get to be the biggest company around by playing fair.

CC Non-commercial license

[Late Adopter]

The summary states plain as day that the non-commercial CC license was used, so if the offenders weren't using his material in the furtherance of making a buck he wouldn't have a problem.

Re:Why ask?

[The Moof]

This is not so much "My information shouldn't be free" but "stop using my works for profit when the license explicitly says for non-commercial use."

Re:Why ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a question for slashdot. This is a question for a lawyer. If you don't trust what your lawyer friend said, you should find another lawyer and ask them. You will *NOT* find legitimate legal advice on slashdot.

That doesn't matter

[JoeBuck]

Boing Boing releases their stuff using a license that would prevent others from picking it all up on a different web site and selling ads. This doesn't give them the right to use others' work in a way that conflicts with the license (other than fair use, which might allow for a thumbnail link). I think that this license violation on their part was inadvertent, the author of the web page thought he was filing his personal "I'm on vacation" announcement and forgot about the ads. In the case of BoingBoing I would politely ask them to take it down, and to respect that "noncommercial" means "don't attach ads to this". The copyright holder can still decide to grant permission if asked politely.

Re:Why ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a big difference between copying others stuff as an aid to making a profit like the corporations the poster is talking about has done and a person copying something without the interest of making a profit off it.

You just kinda lumped in the guy who downloaded the last episode of his favorite TV show he missed right with the guy who copies thousands of movies and music to sell on the black market and the corporations who copy with impunity cause they can get away with it like that movie where the guy invented the intermittent windshield wiper and GM stole it into the same group which is FAR from the same thing.

That's a rude way to start

[JoeBuck]

Begin by sending a polite request to remove the content that is being used without permission.

Re:Why ask?

[kz45]

"There is a big difference between copying others stuff as an aid to making a profit like the corporations the poster is talking about has done and a person copying something without the interest of making a profit off it."

Why does profit matter? It seems the open source community is not interested in making a profit. However, many become interested when someone else puts the hard work into it and makes money.

Since you don't care in the first place, how is it really hurting you if a company makes a profit? You aren't losing anything.

RIAA

[tepples]

Invoice them. If they don't pay, sue them.

That's exactly the major record labels' strategy.

Re:Why ask?

[Pedersen]

It's giving you a taste of your own medicine.

Wait, what? I actually don't pirate software. I don't download what I don't have permission (from the rights holder) to download. And yet, from that, you're saying it's okay to violate my rights. You're saying that it's okay to violate the rights of one party on the grounds that a second party's rights are being violated by a third party, based on your assumption that the first party and the third party are pretty much one and the same.

Wow, and I thought I was an asshole. Thanks for making me realize how wrong I was.

Re:If you really care, sue

[Phrogman]

If you don't pursue this in some form against all parties you discover have violated your rights, can their lawyers say that you were not actively seeking to defend the license on your images and therefore any individual attempt can be dismissed? I mean its like that with trademarks is it not? If you aren't actively defending it, you can lose it?
IANAL of course.
I would pursue the DMCA takedown notice route I think (assuming you are in the USA), and let them know of the problem. At the same time, contact the EFF and see if they can help. I am sure they prefer high profile cases of course, but things that advance the cause of the EFF - and defending the CC license might be viewed as such - might get their support (and thus cover the costs of suing). Actually, contact the EFF first and see what they say, maybe the DMCA takedowns need to be run through them first :P
Is a shame that western civilization has settled on a system where only those with money can get justice, and those with more money can ignore the laws more or less as they see fit provided they are prepared to spend money on lawyers.

Re:DMCA?

[TheRaven64]

Last I checked, Canada was a signatory to the Berne convention. Even though the DMCA does not apply, the copyright does. They are distributing copyrighted work without a valid license to do so, which is illegal in Canada. Considering the fact that Doctorow has used CC-NC licenses for his own work, I'd really expect him to know what he is allowed to do with them...

Re:CC Non-commercial license

[betterunixthanunix]

Off topic, but CC non-commercial licenses were a bad idea to begin with -- the idea behind CC is that I should be able to share, but if I cannot charge for the service of, say, burning a compilation of CC media to Blu-ray (not at all far fetched to do), then the license is not really furthering the goal of sharing. This is exactly the sort of argument behind why the GPL allows commercial distribution.

Re:DMCA?

[dave420]

Because the people we hear about who get sued for copying music are not doing it for money, whereas the people in the article are large companies trying to actively profit off the images in question. I doubt you'll find many people who are arguing that copyright violation for commercial gain is OK, which is the direct analogy to the situation outlined in this article.

Re:Why ask?

[rk]

You *do* realize that there is more than one person posting on Slashdot, right? And just because a lot of people are anti-copyright doesn't mean they all are, right?

Re:DMCA?

[genfail]

I am curious: If this is wrong, why is copying music (which is under a much more restrictive license than Creative Commons) not? Is it a "because I didn't make money off of it" thing?

Genuine question here, not trying to troll or flamebait.

Most people on /. probably would not say that full blown piracy is OK. Most of the issues with copyright law brought up here are with specific abuses of copyright, restrictive DRM, attacks on fair use, even using DMCA to attack free speech, etc. Even the hypocrisy of the music labels claiming that they are just trying to protect the rights of artists that they themselves are not paying is fair game.

There is a big difference between wanting to crack DRM for music you legally purchased so it can be played by another device or making another Downfall parody and pirating music for the explicit purpose of making bootleg CD's that you sell for profit.

What they are doing in this case is piracy for the explicit purpose of making profit.

Re:Why ask?

[tiksi]

I dont think that the 'pro-piracy' comments refer to people who steal music/movies/games and sell them. Downloading say, a song, without paying for it and listening to it, is more analogous to printing this picture and putting up on my wall to look at it. On the other hand, downloading a song and selling it is analogous to what happened in this case with the picture. So before you get all high and mighty, please compare the like scenarios instead of skewing things to fit your needs.

Re:Send them a bill

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re:Send them a bill

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a contract, which they violated.

Re:Send them a bill

[Hognoxious]

[citation to the contrary needed]

Re:If you really care, sue

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, of course the EFF would help you sue Cory Doctorow, who is a former EFF staff member, recipient of EFF's 2007 Pioneer Award, and a current EFF fellow.

Which just makes it all that more insulting that BoingBoing slapped the image onto one of Cory's postings. If the people who are supposedly "fighting the good fight" don't even bother to check the status of image licenses, can we really get that upset when MegaCorp(TM) don't?

Re:Send them a bill

[Hognoxious]

The only problem here is that most large companies won't actually pay an invoice to an entity (company) that isn't somehow a "registered vendor" or whatever label they decide to stick on the "account".

Try not paying your taxes to anyone who isn't - in your opinion - a "registered collector". See if it helps you keep your possessions.

Your organization's administrativialities, policies and similar bullshit have zero legal weight when dealing with anyone else.

Re:Creation is rights ownership.

[nmos]

Stealing has zero to do with "physical" and 100% to do with value.

I think the point he was trying to make is that when you steal a physical object the owner no longer has it but when you copy someone else's work they still have their copy. These are two different things and deserve their own words. That's why we call one "stealing" and the other a "copyright violation".

If you drain someone's paypal account, you're not taking anything physical, you're just fiddling with numbers.

Those numbers are a representation of actual money and the person you stole it from no longer has that money to spend.

You hurt them because you took away THEIR opportunity to make money.

Maybe so and maybe not. Copying a song that you wouldn't have purchased anyway costs the owner nothing while taking a physical object (or money as you've pointed out) deprives the owner of that item.

Re:MAY be violating

[Hognoxious]

Your argument appears to be that because you don't make a profit it isn't commercial use.

I'd argue that it's commercial, just not very successful at it. It's the distinction between a non-profit organization (which includes some major corporations at the moment) and a not-for-profit.

Re:Send them a bill

[dreampod]

That is a astoundingly anti-consumer ruling. Anyone who browses a infringing copyright image is guilty of copyright infringement themselves but if they can prove (at the cost of time and a lawyer) that it was innocent infringement the court 'may' reduce the award so that they are 'only' liable for statutory damages. That means a $750 minimum award per infringing work for someone who is entirely innocent of any intent to infringe and likely with no way of knowing that there were infringing works there before visiting even if they had perfect knowledge of the copyright status of all works.

That has the very real potential to create a business model that would make the RIAA look positively kind and reasonable. 'Arrange' for works that you have the registered copyright to are easily available for taking. Find website that has posted a selection of them posted (or for a fairly illegal and risky method - post them yourself anonymously) then ensure that the site gets a high traffic boost (/., digg, 4chan). Once that is done sue the website for copyright infrigement with a settlement option of no cost to them but they must provide full logs of everyone who visited and then go to town RIAA style with mass lawsuits against improperly injoined Doe's.