There was an interesting article about the cost for online copyright violations in yesterday's Business section of the LA Times by columnist David Lazarus.
In essence, Lazarus says the damage costs demanded by companies such Getty Images and Corbis, which could be up to $1,200, are exorbitant.
The column starts off with a story about a small businessman who gets a letter from Getty asking for $1,000 in damages for illegally using their image on his site. The businessman has no intention of paying the fine, because he believes it's too high. He took the image off his site and decided to ignore the request.
Though the columnist points out that the photographers who take these photos are small businesspeople, too (and thus need their cash as much as the businesspeople who use their photos), he veers around the point that it should be the Web design firm who built this man's site who pays for illegally using someone's work to build a site.
According to the Times, "Getty says it finds about 42,000 examples of copyright infringement a year. For its part, Corbis says it uncovers about 70,000 violations annually."
That's a pretty sizable number of copyright infringements. And a lot of money that should rightly go back to the photographers and the companies that handle their work.
I don't know about you, but I think $1,000 is a fair fee to a design firm who openly steals another person's work to make money. Buying photos and their rights has always been part and parcel of doing design work.
It'd be different if Corbis and Getty are going after a Blogger who doesn't know any better (and I would say give that person a warning and direct them to Creative Commons), but I think it's pretty clear here that the design firm, not the businessperson, should take the hit for this.
Any other opinions?
(legally used photo by Ed Yourdon)
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