Photographer sues Getty Images for $1 billion after she's billed for her own photo

[progressoid]

9. Right.

My guess is that particular incident was one of many cease and desist letters sent out daily to infringers by LCS. Getty is already trying to distance themselves from that part of it.

LCS works on behalf of content creators and distributors to protect them against the unauthorized use of their work. In this instance, LCS pursued an infringement on behalf of its customer, 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.

Supposedly Getty and LCS are separate entities but strangely they have the similar corporate addresses.

Where is gets weird is that she's made all of her images public domain. Getty is claiming “It is standard practice for image libraries to distribute and provide access to public domain content,” and that distributing and providing access should not be confused with “asserting copyright ownership.” Apparently in response to the lawsuit which states “[Getty] are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees … but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner.”

This is going to get interesting.

There are over 100 others named in the lawsuit as well. Getty in particular are assholes IMHO. They've been screwing photographers and filmmakers for a couple decades. Hey, guess who owns them now? The Carlyle Group.

I hope Ms. Highsmith is successful against these leeches.