Photo trolls suing for failure to provide proper “attribution,” stifling creativity?

Copyright policy is being called into question as more and more “not-so-benevolent” photographers are posting images on various websites such as Flickr and Instagram that can be synched with photo infringement detection websites such as Pixsy, which allow photographers to see if anyone is using their images, drawings, art, illustrations or other creative digital content. Pixsy will surf the internet and social media sites looking for any website that has posted the photographer’s images.

Once a “match” is found, a photographer belonging to Pixsy can send out a cease and desist letter or even take legal action. This is all fine and dandy; however, I am seeing more and more that Creative Commons licenses are being abused and turned into a “profit center” by photographers looking to hold a commercial business liable for failing to follow the (often complex) requirements of attribution.

For example, an image may be found online and the rights to FREE use of the image (even for commercial purposes) can be enticing for a company, often smaller companies, looking for royalty-free images and photos for their websites, podcast cover art, social media posts (ex. for TikTok, YouTube videos or for Instagram or Facebook photos), and at other times for use as a background image for a real estate company’s website, such as a beautiful beach landscape image for a California or New York realtor brokerage.

Companies may feel safe using these images because (1) the author promotes it as FREE to use, (2) the attribution requirement may seem simple, and (3) they may assume the photographer is a “good-sumaritan” type of person who has no interest in filing a federal copyright infringement lawsuit.

In these cases, a photographer may find its image being used via Pixsy, or Tineye, or Yandex reverse image search tools, and take a closer look to see if the proper attribution was made. If not made TO THE TEE (ex. providing a link to the license and a link to the original image on the photographers website, or adding the copyright symbol, etc.).

The greedy photographer may then hit the company with a copyright infringement cease-and-desist and legal demand letter. I have seen offers as high as $60,000 for a single image. The question here becomes, is this type of licensing fostering the progress of science and the “useful arts,” as is often said, important to society? Or is this type of conduct deceptive in nature and done maliciously to extract large settlements by photo infringement artists that may be doing this and filing a large number of federal court lawsuits?

As to these “attribution cases,” there needs to be a very simple and fair way to provide the attribution and simple instructions. If not, I cannot see much value in the creative commons system, as it can take quite some time to read the license terms and comply strictly with each and every requirement imposed. Congress should look into this.

The so-called “sharing culture” is becoming increasingly the “lawsuit GOTHCA culture” if this is allowed to continue. If you want to be a benevolent photographer, make it easy for everyone, and lawsuits should be banned in all but the most aggrieve cases.

If not, copyright infringement defendants will be left to argue fair use, innocent infringement, copyright misuse and other defenses for merely trying to use an image they believed in good faith was FREE to use by a friendly photographer.

Without fair use, their would be no documentary films or videos!

Congress should create public domain resources and clarify fair use in the United States

What can artists and filmmakers believe in anymore? They have to tell their stories, and THE PEOPLE want and need to hear the great stories that are begging to be told. But, the copyright fair use laws are super tough to understand and apply. Congress needs to create a fair use BILL OF RIGHTS, describing what you CAN and CANNOT do to be protected by the fair use doctrine condified under 17 USC 107. If you don’t make things clear, creativity is STIFFLED!! Help us out Congress and the Courts!!

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Steve Vondran, CEO Copyright Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

Here are 10 important copyright law public policy issues that should be addressed going into 2025 to make copyright law more fair, equitable and understandable.

1. Digital Copyright Enforcement & Platform Accountability

Issue: Current copyright enforcement mechanisms place too much responsibility on creators to police platforms for infringing content.

Proposed Solution: Introduce clearer, stronger obligations for digital platforms to identify and remove infringing content proactively, possibly leveraging AI, and implement meaningful penalties for platforms that fail to act.

2. Fair Use Clarification and Expansion

Issue: The boundaries of fair use remain unclear, leading to inconsistent judicial outcomes and fear of litigation for users engaging in transformative uses.

Proposed Solution: Congress could enact clearer statutory guidelines or safe harbors that explicitly define transformative uses, allowing for a more balanced approach to creative expression while maintaining copyright protections for original creators.

3. Restructuring Copyright Terms

Issue: The current term of copyright protection is lengthy (life of the author plus 70 years), which can stifle access to works that should be entering the public domain.

Proposed Solution: Shorten the term of copyright protection (e.g., life of the author plus 50 years), or allow for a more flexible renewal process, where the creator has to actively renew their copyright at specific intervals.

4. Royalty Transparency and Audits

Issue: Many artists are unaware of their actual earnings due to opaque royalty accounting practices by labels, publishers, and streaming platforms.

Proposed Solution: Implement mandatory royalty transparency laws that require platforms to provide clear, accessible, and standardized royalty breakdowns, as well as easier pathways for artists to conduct audits without fear of retaliation.

5. AI-Generated Works and Copyright Eligibility

Issue: The rise of AI-generated content challenges traditional notions of authorship and copyright eligibility.

Proposed Solution: Establish guidelines to distinguish between AI-assisted and AI-generated works. For AI-assisted works, grant copyright protection to the human creator directing the AI’s creative input, while providing alternative protections or public domain status for entirely AI-generated works.

6. Copyright in User-Generated Content and Remix Culture

Issue: Copyright laws do not adequately address the burgeoning remix culture of digital media, where users create derivative works from copyrighted content.

Proposed Solution: Create a statutory license or micro-licensing system for user-generated content that allows creators to legally use small parts of copyrighted works without facing prohibitive fees or lawsuits, while still compensating original creators fairly.

7. Small Creators vs. Corporate Copyright Holders

Issue: Large corporations often exploit copyright law to stifle small creators and competition through aggressive takedowns and lawsuits.

Proposed Solution: Implement stronger protections against abusive copyright litigation and takedown requests by requiring a more thorough vetting process and penalties for baseless claims, especially targeting bad-faith claims by large corporate rights holders.

8. Educational and Research Exceptions

Issue: Educators and researchers often face obstacles in accessing copyrighted materials for teaching or scholarly purposes due to unclear or restrictive licensing requirements.

Proposed Solution: Expand statutory exemptions for educational and research purposes, making it easier to access and use copyrighted works for non-commercial and academic uses, and create a standardized license for academic institutions.

9. Moral Rights and Attribution

Issue: In the U.S., moral rights (the right to attribution and to protect the integrity of the work) are not as robust as in other countries, often leaving creators vulnerable to misrepresentation or alteration of their works. Proposed Solution: Strengthen moral rights protections, particularly around the right to attribution, ensuring that creators retain more control over how their work is used or altered, even after they transfer the economic rights to their work.

See also creative commons attribution simplification

10. Orphan Works and Access to Cultural Heritage

Issue: Many works remain under copyright protection, but the original creators or rights holders cannot be located, leaving these works in legal limbo and inaccessible to the public.

Proposed Solution: Create a legal framework for the use of orphan works, allowing them to be used for educational, research, or cultural preservation purposes after a reasonable search for the rights holder. If the rights holder later emerges, they should be compensated but not given the right to retroactively block the use of the work.

These proposed solutions seek to balance the rights of creators with public access to creative works, adapting copyright law to the modern digital landscape.

If you can think of any other issues that need to be on our list, please let us know!

This company needs to be reigned in, people are SUFFERING BIG TIME!

One thing I know for sure, people who use BitTorrent or other related applications and download adult movies can find themselves in quite a bind.

People make mistakes, but should you have to pony up your life savings to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit? Strike 3 Holdings believes you do, and they literally have no mercy for the clients; many are Asians in the Bay area and elsewhere.

They will send subpoenas to the ISP’s and seek to hold them liable for infringement, many times to the tune of $500 or more per movie downloaded. In a typical case, there may be 30-50 movies. All you have to do is add up the numbers and see how outrageous the settlement demands will be.

It is not uncommon to see demands of $25,000 to $35,000 for merely downloading movies (where copyright notices and FBI warnings are not usually found) and to try to milk these people financially dry.

Most people have no idea that downloading videos on torrent protocol is illegal, after all, there are so many “Tube” site that offer free videos, most people think there is nothing illegal being done.

Don’t forget, most people have never taken a copyright law course, and many of our clients are immigrants that come from countries where this IS NOT COPYRIGHT LAW, and certainly no education about countries like the United States that have such laws.

BOTTOM LINE: Give good people a chance before you break their piggy bank. Send a demand letter (cease and desist) when you catch an infringement if you are serious about stopping the infringement. Suing people as “John Doe” defendants in jurisdictions like NY, California, Colorado, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio (states where people have money) is unconscionable.

Mitigate your damages with a fair warning. This has to be stopped, and soon. Support our cause.

Fair Use needs to be more predictable.

Here is a quick list of 5 items that should be considered “fair use” under the copyright laws. This should be codified as a “Fair Use Bill of Rights.” Let me know your thoughts, if you agree, disagree, or would add other things:

  1. Any third-party clip that is used for less than 5 seconds is fair game (ex. using a short 5-second audio or video clip, sound effect, music clip, etc.) regardless of the purpose.
  2. Any photo can be used if the content creator is either using it to (a) help tell the story or (b) commenting on the photo in some form or fashion.
  3. A content creator cannot use a third party’s content more than TWICE in any one film or creation. But if two or less, this is fair dealing.
  4. Both parody and satire should qualify for fair use protection
  5. Any content that is reasonably believed to be over 100 years old so be fair use, even if that belief is wrong.

Those in the business of tracking and monitoring illegal software usage with “phone home” technology should be held to a strict reading of the statute of limitations.

As a seasoned software copyright lawyer having handled hundreds of infringement defense matters with various companies such as Ansys, Siemens, Autodesk, Microsoft, Solidworks/Dassault, Vero/Hexgaon, Synopsis, and others, I have come to find a common trend that may need legislative addressing. This deals with companies that use “phone home” technology that notifies the software publisher whenever unlicensed software is being used.

The companies in this arena vary, and this monitoring of a company is typically justified by an alleged consent to the terms of the end-user license agreement (“EULA”) which sets forth that the company can do this to protect its intellectual property.

While this is understandable, the problem becomes that in many cases I am noticing “hits” or “usage” going back four, five, or even six years. This raises a potential statute of limitations issue (the SOL for copyright infringement is three years from the date of discovery).

In these cases where you have companies that are in the business of monitoring and tracking users, they should be required to act within three years to pursue a claim in federal court. Instead, we don’t see this and the typical response is “we just discovered the infringement.”

This is not really true because they have been tracking illegal use of say a pirated program from a torrent site like Pirate Bay, but trying to rack up the hits (failure to mitigate damages) by waiting around and seeing how many uses a company can rack up before the publisher does something about it five years later.

There should be a strict rule from the courts, or a statute, stating that these companies who routinely employ these monitoring measures must bring their action within three years of the first logged illegal use of the software.

Strike 3 Holdings has filed THOUSANDS of lawsuits across the United States in states like Illinois, Washington, California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and other states.

Typically, they are extracting settlements anywhere from $150 to $750 per movie allegedly infringed. This can add up. For example, if an adult downloads 100 movies and shares them via BitTorrent protocol via “the swarm” the so-called John Doe Defendant can be on the hook for a $20,000 to $50,000 settlement.

Many people who are sharing their movies online have no idea they are doing anything illegal. For example:

  1. Most do not see any copyright symbols on the movies;
  2. Most do not see any FBI WARNING SYMBOL as you see at the movies putting you on notice not to infringe copyrights
  3. Most have never had a business law class where POSSIBLY they would have been exposed to copyright law
  4. Most have never taken a copyright course in law school
  5. Most remember Napster, and many believe it is a legal technology

So, there are lots of reasons why people infringe on these movies, but most doing so have no idea they are doing anything wrong. However, under the copyright laws of the United States even “non-willful” infringement or “innocent infringement” is actionable.

I think its time for Congress to enact legislation requiring Strike 3 to put warning notices on their films and a copyright notice so that users will KNOW DEFINITIVELY that they are engaging in illegal conduct when they enter the BitTorrent realm and download, share, and distribute films.

Breaking Copyright News – Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is set to take its first infringement filing on June 16, 2022.

So, what will it be?  A photo infringement case by AP, Reuters, or Agence France Presse?  A fabric design infringement (Etsy dispute), infringement of a jewelry design or architectural plan, or good old-fashioned music or video piracy case.  It remains to be seen, but as we have mentioned, the cases can go up to $30,000 so this is not really a “small” claim anymore.

Listen here for more information

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/attorneysteve/2022/06/02/copyright-small-claims-board-is-open-for-business-on-june-16-2022

Steve Vondran in Washington D.C.

Steve Vondran, Founder of Copyright Policy Group

The library of congress provides exemptions for copyright law.  For example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).  Many vehicles nowadays, including cars, trucks, tractors and even boats and yachts are run by software (ex. driving and braking assistance, power windows, seats and doors, navigation and media/entertainment systems.

Many times, when you “buy” a vehicle you may not be actually “buying” the software that runs the vehicle.  That may be subject to a copyright “license” meaning you cannot violate the copyright holder’s rights without legal rights to do so (for example, “fair use” rights).

Listen to our copyright law podcast


DMCA 1201 lawyer

Recently, the Library of Congress passed a guideline which allows people to “hack” their own vehicle for safety reasons.  Listen as Attorney Steve®, the copyright lawyer explains in this podcast.