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Getty sues Google over content "piracy"
http://press.gettyimages.com/getty-imag … nst-google I will refrain from expressing my opinion on either party. This forum encourages polite language and civility... Sep 29 16 11:40 am Link Odd: an American firm suing another American in Europe because they got no traction with such a suit in the US. We truly live in interesting times. Sep 29 16 04:45 pm Link This lawsuit seems to be less about who is right, and more about who is less wrong. Unfortunately, one side is going to have to win ... Which could set a legal precedent based on being unethical and legal, or ethical and illegal. Sep 29 16 06:16 pm Link Zack Zoll wrote: Nuke some popcorn, get a seat, and watch the T-Rexs brawl. Google was founded on a base of piracy; Getty uses piracy as part of their business method. A pox on both their sordid casas. Sep 29 16 06:20 pm Link The real shame is that both companies work in a way that devalues their own product, and one is going to get The Nod. I assign my photo students a photographer to write a research paper on every semester. I like to pick someone that is relevant to them, and usually throw out several rising stars of the art world. Sometimes I make students do their report on someone *I* want to learn more about. Students need to track down a physical book. I work closely with our library, and they've scored lots of rare(only a couple hundred copies) books for us. I require a book because books are planned - either by the artist, or by the publisher. Somebody decided what was the best representation of what the artist was doing at the time, and what image order got the point across the best. Online, you basically get Greatest Hits. There is no rhyme or reason other than popularity, and not everything shows up. Avedon's In The American West and Richardson's Lady Gaga are two of the bestselling books of all time by well-known photographers ... But you can go through twenty pages of Google Image Search and still not see some images from these books. In the case of the Avedon book, most of the 'plot' images don't show up, and it looks like a book of rednecks and a bee guy. And this happens because 'democratising' something means boiling it down to the lowest cmon denominator. We all understand Bee Guy, so that pops up the most, despite being least relevant to the work. Greatest Hits. As a grunge kid, it pisses me off that the best-known Soundgarden and Nirvana songs are Black Hole Sun and Smells Like Teen Spirit; the former is nothing like the rest of the catalog, and the latter is probably the poppiest, catchiest version of the same song Kurt wrote seven times before. When you make everything equally available, ranked by interest, what you necessarily get is a scale weighted by people that don't understand the work. It's an even bigger problem now, since your Average Joe doesn't buy books or albums anymore, and finds work online based on popularity ratings. In thier own ways, Getty and Google are both stifling artistic knowledge and creativity; one on purpose, one by accident. I don't think it matters a lick who wins the case - the fact that one of them will be dubbed 'right' may very well have a tremendous negative impact on future artists and pros. Sep 29 16 08:46 pm Link pot and kettle Sep 29 16 09:55 pm Link Zack Zoll wrote: Not exactly. Sep 30 16 06:58 am Link Motordrive Photography wrote: Absolutely. And neither can be described accurately without using foul language. Sep 30 16 01:14 pm Link Barry, Your response is well-heard, but I don't believe you caught the point I was trying to make. Perhaps I was unclear. You're describing the effect of the algorithm on a 'fresh' photographer, who basically just has the web presence they built themselves. Migrant Mother is one of the most famous photos ever taken - Top Ten, easy. It appears in almost every photo, sociology, and American history text book, and a good chunk of non-scholastic books as well. The reason for this is partially because it is a good photo, but also because all that FSA stuff is public domain. So it gets used over and over, and written about because everyone knows it from the books, and it snowballs to the point where her government work drowns out her personal work. If you want to see what Lange was making for herself, you pretty much need a book, or you need to go see a show. Or you need to go directly to her gallery's site - those lesser-known images get lost in a sea of Migrant Mothers when searching. I use Greatest Hits as an example because like relevance links, it is lowest common denominator. Bowie's Low is critically regarded as his most important work, but only one song was a hit - and it was included specifically so the record could have at least one hit single. It doesn't even make it on every compilation. Google's system, taken to the absolute extreme, would essentially make Low, and Lange's personal work, invisible unless you knew the name of the songs/images. You could/can find works you know, but it is very hard to be exposed to work you haven't seen before. That is the problem with democratising information. Or as Carlin put it, "Think about how stupid the average person is ... And remember that half of them are dumber than that!" Sep 30 16 04:27 pm Link Zack Zoll wrote: No actually I did get your point. That's what all the gibberish above was about. Basically speaking anything can be found, anything, if it's done right. People just don't care to do it right. Even big companies. Even huge companies. They only care about home page or landing page search results. Not individual pages or items. If they were to really do it right then those pages and items would easily found and over come what seems to be staggering odds. Sadly so few business or people actually do it. Sep 30 16 10:47 pm Link This Getty claim is NOT about piracy. It is also NOT about infringement. It is about web indexing and search results. What Getty are getting at is a much more exotic point than simply piracy and / or infringement. If anything their case in this instance is a lot closer to the Perfect 10 v. Google case that ran through the American courts between ca 2006 and 2010 though even that one alleged at least facilitation of infringement. In Perfect 10 the court ultimately ruled in Google's favor. While it leaves some questions open [relative to US law] the bottom line is that the Court upheld important policies of fair use and freedom online and resisted Perfect 10's plea to put copyright owners completely in charge of how and when search engines and other online intermediaries can provide their users with links to images. Getty are only in the European courts on this because the European courts have already been after Google for some time as a, indeed THE, dominant player in the search engine field and Europe does not like dominant players in any business enterprise to run the field. Even when Google are not excluding competitors directly they may be seen to be doing it indirectly by reason of their sheer size which, in theory at least, disporportunately attracts advertisers, users, ect. and where Google can, it is alleged, manipulate the search results to optimise their own business advantage over other search engines. I don't know that Getty will get a lot of traction on their specific claims in the European courts any more than Perfect 10 did in the US courts. Studio36 Oct 01 16 05:07 am Link |
