Photographers using these kinds of copyright enforcement services are only hurting themselves in the long run. Most aren’t going to risk multiple thousands of pounds worth of fines for a few content images. They’ll switch to AI-generated content, or won’t use images at all, and licensing revenue will eventually decline.
If these enforcement services were legitimate entities instead of parasitic trolls, they would start by providing the infringer with options to either remove the image or purchase a royalty free license at a reasonable price, and only impose punitive fees if they continued to infringe.
Maybe, but "photographers" aren't really a collective... or too loose a collective to have foresight, interests and such.
The credit industry, traditionally, has a cascade of debt collection tiers. Once one tier fails to collect, they'll sell on the debt. The value of the debt (asset, to the collector) decreases drastically as we travel down the tiers. The "quality" of collectors also decreases. Business models that depend on illegal practices, betting on inadequate enforcement. Trial preparations that depend on 99% certainty of defendant not showing up. Most of the debt might be arbitrarily imposed interest and fines to nonresponsive "clients." The lawyer present may not have paperwork, or even know the companies' originally owed.
Financial assets like bad debt portfolios scale and bundle wonderfully, so there's no floor. There are multi-million dollar packages out there selling for $1000. An enterprising individual might take a blind chance. Apply creative means of collecting 1.3% of total debt. Maybe you offer 90% settlements. Maybe impose 500% fees and sell on. Maybe you specialise in deceased estates, acquire high morbidity debtor lists, and use systemic timing to advantge. Maybe you rebunde such that specialists can have a crack.
Anyway... At the copyright trolling end of this game, I'd make a distinction between "photographers," "rights holders" and the "copyright biz." What some shady lawtech startup does to monetize a copyright portfolio owned by their pay-per-performance client... "Photographer" is not really an active category within this structure.
> Once one tier fails to collect, they'll sell on the debt
I think there should be a law stating that if your debt is sold to a third party and you are not offered to settle with the same amount than the third party was paying, the debt should be automatically forgiven. Yep, that would make many loans more difficult to issue, and that would be net good.
Maybe. I mean, it might makes moral sense maybe. IRL, these things play out in unsatisfying ways.
"that would make many loans more difficult to issue"
Maybe in some cases, but I'm broadly skeptical. Selling bad debt is usually not an important part of non-shady businesses models. 2nd order effects, if any, are likely to be the main concern. If a business is known to offer 10% settlements after 2 years... that predictability will eventually be taken advantage of.
Honestly, I think the debt stuff (also aspects of copyright) are just the loose ends of major industries. Most bad debt or long tail IP assets aren't worth much. But if you can bundle, they're never too small to monetize.
Once you have an industry dedicated to squeezing that last drop... you probably have a destructive industry.
IMO, the best solutions is policing. Somehow, policing is rarely mentioned as a solution to corporate crime. That might mean occasionally tweaking laws to help make policing effective... but that only makes sense ifyou are already policing.
I bet these trolls are as sloppy as the victims they're targeting. At least in debt collection, at a certain depth... they're not doing any due diligence. Often, all they have is a name, number and sum. That means they often are collecting on BS premises. Charge them with fraud, or racketeering. A business practice premised on demanding payment of a debt, without proof that the debt is real... that's an extortion racket.
I wonder if the trolls here can stand up to scrutiny. Do they actually own the rights? Have they based their business model on strategic avoidance of due diligence? From what I've heard, IP trolling exists by exploiting liability limits of both corporate law, and practical law enforcement.
The daily mail et al will continue to pay them - £150 for the first photo £50 for each additional [1] of "celebrity walking into a party" or "royal shakes hand".
Are people with blogs really paying Getty Images £150-£450 to have one of their images on their blog post? I suspect nobody else was paying the photographers for the images before this and nobody will after, it changes nothing.
1. http://www.londonfreelance.org/rates/index.php?work=Photogra...
A blogger might pay $5-$10 per image to license through Shutterstock(owned by Getty) or another microstock site.
Can you explain the phrase "purchase a royalty free license" please? Honest question: I don't know the difference between a licence-fee and a royalty.
Royalties are typically calculated by quantity: you do N transactions, you pay N x Y to the rightsowner. For photos it could be the number of magazines you print, or a percentage of sale on each magazine, or the number of impressions on a website, etc.
"Royalty free licenses" are typically one-offs. You pay a fixed amount and then are free to reproduce the work as many times as you want. Some of these contracts might be limited, i.e. you can only do it in one magazine issue etc.
It's an evolution away from the previous norm of complicated usage-based licensing schemes that fall under the term Rights Managed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_Managed
They're still in use, but represent a smaller share of a much larger pie created by Royalty-Free licenses.
Royalty is per use, like if you license photos for a book cover there might be an up-front cost and also a few cents per book sold.
Yep - I could say "here, you can use my photo for your book cover, just give me a penny for each book made or sold".
But it's simpler accounting to go with "give me $1000 for use of my photo in one case" or even "everything" but then rarely my photo ends up on the cover of Harry Potter 12: Eclectic Boogaloo and I feel I missed out.
Photographers will not be harmed by people who are already not paying for images choosing a different way to not pay for images.
The photographers work wont get circulated either
I use to create and post images without any watermark and just use reverse image search to demand fees, that was the whole business model
but then everything went deep web with Facebook and group chats so it couldnt be found
> The photographers work wont get circulated either
The only thing worse than copyright trolls are the I will give you """exposure""" if you give me this for free crowd.
If people want their work circlated for free then they can license it and give it away as such.
All AI generated content is doing is ripping off peoples work, it’s just AI seems to come with a get out of jail free card.
Then make it closed source and sell usage tokens. It reminds me of kids on Scratch copying programs made by other kids then put "I MADE THIS!" in the description box.
A whole chapter could be written about turning (other peoples) images into executables and assert ownership with a new kind of DRM.
My wife received one of these threatening notices. In her case she had simply retweeted someone's tweet that contained the offending image. This enforcement activity is definitely the wrong side of abusive.
That's shocking.
I wonder whether Twitter users are really legally liable for copyright violation in tweets they retweet, or whether the enforcers just believe they can get away with it.
I suppose it might differ from one jurisdiction to another. Are enforcers of this kind usually in the same jurisdiction as the supposed infringer?
This particular operation seemed to be in Germany - we're in another European country. She got two notices and ignored both. Nothing has come of them so far. Whatever about tweeting an infringing image, retweeting it seems like a bit of a reach.
I suspect a lot of images on Twitter are unintentionally infringing, and that Twitter users typically remain ignorant, because not many are targeted for enforcement. If copyright enforcement against tweeted images takes off, maybe that will change.
However, doesn't Twitter itself add images in some cases (especially where a user tweet a link, but probably also retweets of an image)? If Twitter still does that, does it suggest Twitter itself isn't being targeted for enforcement? If so, is that only because enforcers prefer smaller prey?
Anyway, best of luck to you and your wife!
If you are the target of automated copyright trolling, inspect your server logs whenever you get a notice. Some troll bots will (surprisingly) use an honest HTTP user agent so you can easily block it.
How do you block a legit user agent without blocking a ton of visitors?
I'm assuming by honest they mean it explicitly states "Image Enforcement Bot" or similar - so it can be filtered out with very minimal risk to real users
This is reminiscent of the youtube / twitch music copyright wars - 5 seconds of music gifts the revenue for an 8 hour stream to the copyright holder (or someone claiming to be the copyright holder).
Some observers saw opportunity in these; and there are now more than enough providers of Royalty / DMCA Free Music.
> or someone claiming to be the copyright holder
This was the problem I ran across in 2020, which I detailed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004892. Public domain hymns were being claimed, and they simply ignored my disputes so that they lapsed in my favour after 30 days, but next time we used the same hymn it still got automatically claimed and I had to dispute it again. They should have lost the ability to claim at least those hymns, and preferably just been booted from the platform for dishonesty (copy fraud).
Ignore the trolls and remove the alleged infringing image. Paying them £400 every time is just an invitation for more trolling.
The problem is that the infringement has already happened and that the fee that is being asked is for not bringing this to small claims court (which would be fee plus court fees).
From TFA: What he did is that he removed the ability for event organizers to provide images to him. The risks involved was simply too big, since many event organizers failed to clear permissions before submitting images to him.
This is one space where I think generative AI would be helpful - generate pictures that look mostly right and fill a thumbnail or something on a webpage that doesn't necessarily provide indispensable information but nevertheless fills a void, and costs little. You could probably describe what was in the original photograph and/or draw a representation of it crappily in Paint and use generative AI to fill in the blanks, such that it wouldn't be considered a derivative work but rather just a representation of facts.
Currently most AI-generated images still have a "not quite right" look to them, that perhaps not everyone will notice, but those who do will be turned away by it, so I don't think that's a good idea.
Look at all those instagram stars, tiktokers, and youtubers with their beautify filters.
They already made the "not quite right" to be the normal one on the internet.
Precisely. Culture is very adaptive to adaptive stimulus, and stimulus is high... very high.
I think legal/contractual/economic structure is going to determine things, not human preferences. Preferences evolve.
I think the thing that makes AI images (from Midjourney especially) look a bit off is that they're too shiny and professional. All the people have suspiciously flawless skin, like they've been edited in Photoshop, there's no grain, and the colours are too vivid and dramatic. It looks great but it just doesn't seem real.
I gave it a try just then and the results tended towards cool-looking sunsets, reflective puddles, big dramatic stormy clouds and trees in bloom.
I think this is a result of selecting images for how aesthetic they are, and you could probably train a model on more average-looking pictures to get more realistic results.
It's certainly interesting to watch if it sticks or it remains lesser equivalents, as right now GenAI data certainly seems less appealing.
I expect that will change over time. Until then, it would be nice to have some Fair Dealing exceptions for image copyright. Something like allowing non-profit use of a thumbnail to link to a licensed use of the corresponding image could help.
Does anyone have an example of a copyright troll like this? I.e. a company that offers this kind of copyright enforcement services?
I'm trying to understand how this works. E.g. what is their business model, is this something that would be used by individual photographers, by agencies or by corporations, etc
I mean is it copyright trolling if the organizers are actually infringing on copyrighted photos?
I wonder what people living off selling photos think about that.
It is "trolling" in the sense of the original metaphor of troll fishing - make small demands from a huge number of small cases and get a decent total payment.
It may also be trolling in that it's not the photographer making the claim, but some company that buys rights specifically to do this kind of bulk demand.
Finally there is a sense that it is a very minor infringement - one where there would never have been a chance of a photographer making money off it in the first place. I don't think this is really a good justification, but might make the site a bit more miffed about the demands.
It’s trolling because the photos are easy to substitute or not use at all. No one is going to knowingly post a blog photo costing them 400 quid. It’s a gotcha.
well if this encourages people to check photo licenses, I see that as an absolute win for photographers.
there's plenty of high quality photo on unsplash anyway, and people really ought to know the difference instead of playing ignorant.
I really object to using the term ‘trolls’. There are real people on the other end trying to earn an honest living from their chosen profession. Just because it’s ’only’ a blog, or my website is soo useful, doesn’t make it right to infringe on other people’s rights. It’s a good thing that techonology enables photographers to enforce their rights more efficiently.
A good side effects is that it is starting to sink in for website maintainers that, yeah, you cannot just pick the first photo that is convenient for you.
I will comment on this.
Yes, I used the term troll from my background many years ago writing about patent trolls, so maybe it irks people, but people who complain about one word in a much longer article are maybe... missing the point.
Anyway, as you will probably notice from the article, I am not "picking the first photos that is convenient", but being sent the banner images etc by event organisers to promote their events.
Yes, I can go back with a form for them to fill in and confirm they have copyright clearance etc., and doubtless they'll check, and confirm they have from photo agency X, and maybe I should also check that the photo agency has issued clearance, and that they themselves have validated that the photographer has verified they definetly took the photos... etc etc etc.
You can see that there has to be a point at which you accept that someone in the chain is being honest.
The issue isn't me nicking photos that are convenient, but accepting that a photo sent to me to use in an article/event listing has been cleared by the PR/marketing dept that is sending it to me.
The majority of problems come from small orgs who may seem to lack an awareness of copyright, so to protect myself, I am now taking the decision not to use their images unless I have built up trust in the sender.
However, even large orgs have been caught out - one example was the large theatre that paid for a license to use an image in a marketing poster, only for the stock agency to object to it being used on my website because the license (weirdly) only permitted use in their publications and no where else.
That's a large org trying to do the right thing, and I am trying to do the right thing, and still getting hammered by... well, yes, they're copyright trolls.
Surely you just have them sign a standard form that they have the correct license to allow you to use the image? Then, if you get targeted by a license holder the burden is passed to the people that told you they had the license. Regarding the larger org “trying to do the right thing”, they still failed to do their job properly. These license agreements are usually quite clear and specific in my experience. Their inability to understand it is the issue. They need to hire someone who can. I might not fully understand the tax system but I still have to follow it and “I tried my best” is not a valid excuse.
If you read the article, he knows this but choses not to burden charities with those fees.
Charities, even small charities, have lots of money. They can handle small license fees. They want to comply with the law/regulations/licenses just like any other business.
I don’t think all orgs he’s dealing with are charities proper. AFAICT some of them are tiny volunteer-run groups. I think we safely can assume that not all of those groups have vast amounts of funding.
Fair enough. I still feel like you shouldn’t take stuff that’s not yours. The OP has made the right decision if they don’t want to deal with the overheads of ensuring the images are properly licensed, but denigrating people for catching you out on it isn’t a good look imo.
I guess the reason he wrote on his blog is to inform the users about the change. Why someone posted this to Hacker News though, I’m not sure… It doesn’t really invite to very interesting discussion, IMHO.
> because the license (weirdly) only permitted use in their publications and no where else
What is weird about that? You can buy the licence cheaply with restrictions and you can also pay much more for a less restricted version.
This makes perfect sense, if anyone who licences a picture could freely re-licence it to anyone then the original creator could only sell a licence once therefore they would have to ask much more for that licence to be able to make a living.
> people who complain about one word in a much longer article are maybe... missing the point
I don’t think so. The complaint goes to the hearth of the article. You cannot complain about people enforcing their copyright and at the same breath admit that they are right. If they are right then they are not copyright trolls.
Now if you would tell us a story where one of these people were trying to shake you down for an image you clearly and evidently had the copyright for that would be a different story. But your story as told undermines the phrase you are using, which is the core of the article.
As it reads you are chaffing that you have been ripping off people’s work (without intending to) and now they found an avenue to complain to you.
> I can go back with a form for them to fill in and confirm they have copyright clearance etc.
That is not what the form should say. What it should say is that they (named organisation if you trust them to be around, or named individual if you don’t trust the organisation) will pay any copyright fines you receive in relation to the images they gave you. This is a contract between you and them, so talk with a lawyer to make sure it can be enforced and has all the right elements.
Well, it is Trolls in a way.
I've helped one client who had been targeted by infringement notices for photos they own. In the process of helping them, I did some research into what's going on.
What happens is that Photographers supply their content library to a company that promises to defend their images against unauthorized distribution and collect appropriate licensing fees.
The problem is this:
1) these companies are very aggressive 2) they use some form of image matching search to detect image copies 3) the notices sent out are automated 4) the notices demand fees or legal action will be taken 5) there is no one to talk to or explain anything too 6) it's automated, abusive and often just plain inaccurate
This approach is very stressful for clients who haven't done anything wrong and dont understand what is happening. In some cases they have no control over an image that is published but attributed to them.
So yes, they are Trolls.
This isn't honest creatives defending their work.
In my clients case they had legitimately taken a very similar photo of a very popular public tourist attraction. Fortunately I was able to connect with the original photographer, and eventually, get them to call off their dogs.
If it's user generated content you can follow the steps for DMCA or the EU equivalent and not have any copyright liability
There are real photographers enforcing their copyright, but there are also trolls. The trolls are pushing a few Fotos they made to Wikipedia and “free Foto”-sites with missing terms. Then they search for people who stole their images and extract money. Sure the people who used the images are in the wrong legally, but the trolls actually wanted their images to be stolen. Also, for the trolls, this is the only kind of revenue they get. Those images would never be legally bought or licensed anyway
> Then they search for people who stole their images and extract money.
I think part of this problem is that the assumed value of an image is practically 0. Conversely any YouTuber from some rural backwater will make sure there is no copyright music playing in the background of anything they intend to release because they know that it has non-0 value. The reason this changed is because people became more collectively aware of the consequences. The long term consequences are that people will ensure they have the appropriate permissions before using a photo. Even if this means paying a nearly negligible amount for access to collections of millions of photos like happens with music now.
> Those images would never be legally bought or licensed anyway
Why? If they are good enough that people choose to use them in their publications then why do you assert this?
Tfa suggested he was provided the images by a third party - how do I know the image I paid for on a stock image site is authentic and what’s to stop copywrite trolls from assuming it’s not?
Personally, I think image trolls (and most copywrite complaintants in general) can get fucked.
Yeah, this isn't trolling, it's enforcing
When the SFLC does GPL enforcement, their goal isn't to extract money from inevitable mistakes and oversights, but to bring the offender into compliance. Organizations who are trying to follow the rules and accidentally violate the letter of the law are given a chance to amend their practices; only when organizations intransigently resist following the rules are they targeted for lawsuits. This is enforcement: using the legal system to try to make the system work for everyone involved.
When Patrick McHardy [1] did "GPL enforcement", his goal wasn't to help bring people into enforcement, but to extract money from inevitable mistakes and oversights. Organizations trying to follow the spirit of the law but accidentally violating the letter of the law were lured into restrictive contracts and then punished for minor infractions. This is trolling: using the legal system to intimidate and extract money for minor infractions.
A proper "enforcement" interaction in this case, which was actually trying to make the system work well for everyone involved, would look like this:
Enforcer to website: "You seem to have image X; do you have a license?"
Website: "I got the image from the marketing department of Y; they said their license covered it."
Enforcer to Y: "It seems you gave image X to organization Z for their website; but your license only covers you to use the image on posters. If you want to use the image for partner websites, please upgrade to the version of the license which allows this, or pay this one-off license fee."
Y: "Oh yes, sorry about that; here you go."
Photographer is paid for their image, innocent people don't end up paying fines for simple mistakes; the system works for everyone involved.
[1] https://opensource.com/article/17/8/patrick-mchardy-and-copy...
> trying to earn an honest living from their chosen profession
Every once in awhile you just have to lol.
The article says these were images sent by the organisers.
So it's plausible that the organisers did get a license that allows this.
It's also plausible that they thought they were getting a license that allowed this.
Ultimately though, it seems the photographer had been paid at least once.
Further, in this case, it seems to me the onus should be on the organiser sending out the images intended to be used to promote the event, to make sure they have a license to do that, not on the individual websites. How are they supposed to confirm the copyright of an image, other than what they are told by the supplier of that image?
As a software engineer with a keen interest in photography, I've been using a method to allow others to benefit from my work, while also enjoying the spread of my photos in various public forums. I upload my pictures to Flickr and tag them with a Creative Commons license. This makes it easy for anyone to search and use these images without worrying about licensing fees; they just need to provide a link back to the original source.
This practice has brought me a lot of joy over the years. My photos have appeared on Wikipedia, in concert promotions, and even in a special Ibiza edition of Monopoly. The Monopoly team didn't have to, but they sent me two copies of the game as a thank-you, which was a lovely touch.
For those of you who are like-minded and have photos that could be of public interest, consider setting a Creative Commons license on platforms like Flickr. Doing so could ease the burden for small publishers like ianVisits, allowing them to use high-quality images without worrying about legal repercussions.
That's really cool of you, nice one :-)