Corbis Copyright Complaint

Corbis email | 04/16/04 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

Dear FReepers,

As most of you know, there was some recent media and internet excitement regarding some photos and images of Jane Fonda and John Kerry, some real, and some parodied. Some of these photos and images were copyrighted material controlled by Corbis or derivatives of Corbis copyrighted material. We received a copyright complaint some time back from Corbis and immediately removed all posts we could find containing links to these images.

We've now received another complaint. Apparently, we missed a few, so now we've done another search a found and deleted all we could find. Corbis is also complaining about posted links of these images that are hosted on newsmax.com, indymedia.com and totallysweetpixels.com.

John wrote a script to search our database of posts and removed all of these he could find.

We want to cooperate and fully comply with Corbis's wishes not to have any of their copyrighted material linked from Free Republic, even if it is linked from a third party server.

Please do not post links to any Corbis photos or images, regardless of where they may be hosted. Please let us know through the abuse reporting system if you see or know of any Corbis material that has been posted or linked to Free Republic.

Thanks very much.

Regards,

Jim Robinson

[mhking]

The scrubbing and purging of an the FR news archive continues. Given time, we will be reduced to excerpts only.

I realize that the perception of "fair use" differs between parties, but as some others have pointed out, that fight may need to be fought by either those with deeper pockets, or those who are more "politically correct" than we are.

[MizSterious]

Unfortunately, some have even demanded that we not even link to their publication. I'm talking text here, not images. So obviously it's not a matter of driving traffic to their sites--it's a spittin' contest. It should also be noted that Free Republic appears to be the only site receiving this kind of treatment.

[BushisTheMan]

Founded by Bill Gates in 1989, Corbis is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Düsseldorf, Vienna, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo.

[Enterprise]

It seems silly that they want to forbid linking too. Suppose I see a picture at someone's site that is available to the whole wide world. I E-Mail the site information to you, you paste it and go to it. I have in effect, "linked." So I can't understand how it would be any different to link via a posting, or having you paste and go the site because I sent you an E-Mail.

[Dales]

Well, I never realized that they were the ones who decide. I thought the courts were. So far, deep linking has not been ruled illegal. I doubt highly it ever will be, since servers can decide (based on the information in the http request headers) if the request came from within or without and can redirect outside requests (or reject them).

They already have the power to stop deep links. They don't need the courts to do so, and the courts will continue to rule that way.

Until courts rule another way, I am going to assume that courts are going to continue to rule the way they have so far.

[ProfoundMan]

Yeah, I understand your point and it's certainly valid. It boils my blood too. I'm just concerned that these guys have built a small empire on copyright and digital rights management and thus are probably not the test case we'd like to make.

[mcg1969]

Your wish is our command, sir. I agree with those posters that think this is a shakedown, but you have to pick your battles, and this one isn't worth it.

[ProfoundMan]

You're perhaps more right than you know. I worked for a competitor of Lexis-Nexis for quite some time and the push for digital rights management was quite strong from the copyright holders. We had a system to allow customers to pay more to distribute their downloaded info to larger audiences but it was voluntary. You can guess how many folks volunteered. This is what drives the push for the rights management stuff. The publishers will essentially destroy the intellectual market of their ideas to gain a few more cents on the distribution market.

What we're seeing with Corbis and the like is just the beginning. Crawlers and spiders searching your drives for copyrighted material aren't that far off. The RIAA stuff is just annoying, limiting access to thought is criminal.

[ml/nj]

I agree with those posters that think this is a shakedown, but you have to pick your battles, and this one isn't worth it.

I disagree.

I disagree because it's pretty clear that someone who puts something up on the internet can control who looks at it by restricting access to their server if they wish to do so. I think they have to do more than say they don't want certain classes of people people to look at it.

I don't know how much it would cost to fight this in a court but it's the sort of thing I would support financially. If there are enough of us who would contribute to a legal fund for this purpose, maybe we could stop it before it effectively destroys FR.

ML/NJ

[kemosabe]

This is really not the battle to fight...

MicroSoft will become the repository of most of the information and data if it has it's way...

DRM

Digital Rights Management

Gawdammgates intends to become the owner of all he surveys

this individual has no respect for any law

this individual is not just the owner of corbis

corbis is slowly becoming the image bank/market for the world

these 2 links contain over 1000 opinions and whatever

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/02/0432224&mode=thread&tid=123&tid=99

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/25/2113238&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=149&tid=99

gawdamgates plans to control as much information as
possible utilizing any method necessary

[HighWheeler]

Question

How does one know that an image is from Corbis or not?

[CounterCounterCulture]

Read the message above again. They say we can't even link.

That's freaking insane. Then they shouldn't host the images on their own site.

[Alas Babylon!]

I do hear you, and even agree. But this is Jim Robinson's web site, and if sued, he's the one appearing in court, not us. All I'm saying is, given the history of the whole thing, you understand why Jim is doing as he is.

[FairOpinion]

Don't the people at Corbis have anything to do with their lives?!

Can we link to snopes.com? ;)

http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp

[JLO]

I couldn't agree more. How I found the picture you mentioned was a google search on a partial quote you mentioned: "Protestors near the home of former US President Bill Clinton and US Senator" turned up the photo at the Corbis site, along with all the gobeltly-gook when you look within Corbis.

Tried to cut/paste from their site - nothing doing.

As far as what I think, once something is posted anywhere on the internet, it's fair game to link. Otherwise, what's the point?

[Exit148]

Hmmmm -- I wonder who the Freeper is?

[COEXERJ145]

When my sister was in law school, she worked in the Corbis legal department. What do they mostly do there? They search for any and every use of their so called "property" and threaten to sue whomever they don't want using it. She said that the head lawyer is a Class One B*tch who gets her jollies out of scaring "the little people" with threats of lawsuits.

[JLO]

I agree 100%.

Seems like it's a dead issue though ...

[LowOiL]

Tried to cut/paste from their site - nothing doing.

Your not doing it right, smile...gotta use the right tools.

http://www.relaxingsoftware.com/Snapshot/snapshot.htm

[Exit148]

When my sister was in law school, she worked in the Corbis legal department. What do they mostly do there? They search for any and every use of their so called "property" and threaten to sue whomever they don't want using it. She said that the head lawyer is a Class One B*tch who gets her jollies out of scaring "the little people" with threats of lawsuits.

How are they protected when they take pictures of others? Because it is a public sidewalk, do they have free and legal rein?