Can I be sued for “stealing” something that’s in the public domain?

[RalIy]

Hi,

I found some interesting data. I took a screenshot and included it in a blog. I credited the source where I found it.

The person who apparently originally came up from the data has emailed me threatening to sue me for using it without their permission or alternatively said I can pay them £1,000.

This has freaked me out slightly. Did I break the law here? I figured if it was in the public domain and I credited it, then that was all that was needed??

Did you profit from it, or intend to?
Did you credit your source.

Public domain is pretty vague as others have stated. Also jurisdiction can have a bearing too. Fair usage is possible but again, it has limits.

Id just ignore them personally now that it’s been taken down and you have apologised, unless you get a letter from a solicitor.

Its been taken down now. If they continue to demand money then you can threaten to counter sue them for harassment and black mail.

@sadieshavingashindig No, it is standard proper practice, and it is you who doesn't understand the law.

We are required to take all reasonable endeavours to find an author of a work. 'Reasonable endeavour' is a legal term, it means we exhaust all reasonable paths without sacrificing our own commercial interest. That means if we can find you or your estate in an hours internet search (the vast majority of authors and their estates can be found like that, and if you want to get paid you should be) you'll get paid. If we can't find you we won't put days of research time into it, we will lay aside a sum of money for await claim in case your estate does contact us during the period of license.

The search includes the estate under the 70 year rule.

The 'author of a work' is a legal term meaning the creator of a work, it applies equally to photographers, artists, musicians and anyone else.

We have a legal team who are specialists on international and historic copyright law to advise on all of this, but in the UK it's fairly straightforward and if you have copyright you want to protect, you ought to know it.

@Luredbyapomegranate An hour's internet search does not suffice as "exhausting all reasonable paths" and is simply, as you previously cited, "basic". Copyright is my specialist field and my job, so yes, I do understand the law.

If we can't find you we won't put days of research time into it, we will lay aside a sum of money for await claim in case your estate does contact us during the period of license.

In that case, don't reproduce a work you don't have the rights to and is not public domain! Immoral, shoddy and far from best practice.

Would creating a copy be legal though?

Tagging @Xenia as I think this may be her area of expertise.

Steep learning curve for you.

'I saw it online and was able to screengrab/copy it' does NOT = 'public domain' (not as someone else suggested, a vague concept, actually pretty clearly defined!).

'I used it without permission but credited the author so thats fine' - nope, in very few instances would that be fine and even then, it is good practice to ask. There are a couple of 'fair usage' loopholes but even they don't give you carte blanche to take any amount of other peoples IP and use it wherever you want, whenever, for ever...

There are blatantly cunty theives out there who bank on IP owners not noticing theft, and who have sufficient in the coffers and nasty enough legal bods to ensure they get away with stealing and ripping folk off when they do get caught, as it is extremely expensive for the individual to defend their IP. (Pomegranates company, lots of the big high street clothing brands around the world do it too, off the top of my head I can think of at least six.)

Getty images aggressively track down and demand payments and apparently do go to court if necessary a £1000 seems to be the starting point for their demands.

I would write an apologetic letter and aplogise unreservedly , say you weren't aware you were violating copytight and thought that fair use appled, re-iterate you took it down immediately when requested and put the commercial context of your blog in perspective.

And leave it at that. They cannot get more than they are requesting and can't add on damages or legal fees so it's best then to let them get on with it. At worst you will need to pay the same amount after a lot of grief and hassle from them at best they will back off and you will have learned a valuable lesson.

This looks to be good advice.

whatismyipaddress.com/what-to-do-if-you-get-a-threatening-letter-from-getty-images

www.meronbareket.com/getty-images-demand/

An interesting comment from a photographer under that second article I posted.

It’s good to see articles like this warning bloggers of possible copyright infringement. As a photographer, when one person innocently uses an image without paying, it is then seen by others who then also use it and so on and so on.

The result of this is it becomes unsaleable in the commercial market. In other words, it stops me from feeding my family. I noticed someone mentioning that once you buy the camera there are no other costs. This is an often used / misunderstanding. Studio time, models, travel expenses to visit the countries photographed etc along with actual many hours spent keywording images and uploading them to the agencies is very time consuming and expensive, even applying minimum wage hourly amounts.

Also, and most importantly for you, technology is jumping along and systems like Tineye are being replaced by systems that watermark and fingerprint your images and cannot be removed by manipulation, cropping or stripping meta data. I’m in the process of adding this system and it provides a report of where my images are being used and automates billing to copyright infringers and take down notices. Companies like LicenseStream & PicScout that are supported by Getty build and use the same systems and offer the photographer 50% of any monies gained through chasing people using images illegally. This is the future and will be big money for companies like Getty who can afford to take people to court. Eventually it will become impossible to take images without being caught so it is good to follow the advice here now rather than being caught out later, because it will happen.

On a positive note, these new systems will allow photographers like myself to move away from the larger agencies and offer their own subscription services like 123rf, lower price per image but higher volume of sales mean we can still afford to provide the content you want / require will paying our own way in the world. Would bloggers see an annual subscription of £65 p/annum allowing them to download any images throughout the year for a max of £0.50p per image along with other freebies? Pixel size would be max of 2000px.

Ironically, both Bloggers and Photographers are suffering at the hands of the large Corps like Getty etc. Photographers are often receiving between 15-30% of the money taken by agencies. I would like to think a better understanding between Bloggers and Photographers will result in a squeeze on the BIG middle men currently taking all the money!!

Play safe everyone and best of luck in what ever you enjoy doing.

I guess a question for you, is how would you feel if this was done to your work?

Yup they can sue you. FFS, you should know about copyright if you're publishing anything. I'd make a financial offer and try to meet in the middle.

It was an educated guess based on the assumption that the cost, hassle and risk of legal action would not be worth it. People are deterred from suing all the time because of this.

don’t give them any money. It is possibly a scam and is probably not even against the law.

I think it is possible for him to sue. Most people generally settle if it has a link to the original data source hen i guess it's acceptable.

Are you certain that the person contacting you is even them? It may be a scammer.

Just because something is available on the internet doesn't mean it's public domain.

This.

OP, you have misunderstood what 'in the public domain' means.

There is a lot of content on the internet, it doesn't mean it's all yours to reproduce as you like.

By your reasoning, a book in a library would also be in the public domain, because you can see/ access it.

Can you then reproduce the text/ images from that book wherever you want as long as you credit the author? Of course not.

There is no difference between that book and something you see online. You need to check the copyright.

Unless your blog has very high traffic and you make real money off it, then it's unlikely this will end up in legal action OP as the benefit to be gained for the other party is unlikely to be worth it (and certainly not £1000).

If however you do make a good income from your blog then yeah it might happen, but given how few make real money I'd guess my first scenario is likely more accurate.

Take it down, apologize and leave it at that. Make a note of how many site visits or click throughs had taken place at the time you removed the erroneous content as this will likely be the maximum number of people exposed to the incorrect content shous legal action be taken.

You’re getting a lot of bad advice here. As per usual with legal questions, mumsnet’s answer is usually some nonsense about GDPR without prejudice and a precedent of hocus-pocus.

Yes, you can be sued for this. You did the wrong thing. You’re legally liable. You did “steal” their work and they’re entitled to be paid for their work. It’s not “fair use” and it wasn’t “in the public domain”. You can be sued even though you found it for free. You can sued even though you’ve taken it down. You can be sued even though you gave credit. Any other answer is bollocks.

I work in a relevant field. Based what you say, you don’t understand copyright or the meaning of public domain. You need to stop publishing content until you do. Stanford has some good learning resources on these concepts.

Honestly, that’s because people don’t realise that an open-and-shut, small scale, simple claim like this would barely be any cost/hassle to bring on the small claims track.

This is my area - the demand for £1,000 is completely spurious given the use and the speed with which you took down the content. No court would ever award that sum in damages. It is highly unlikely they will take if further (by actually instituting proceedings), and in the meantime I would avoid engaging with them.

A lot of good advice in this thread about not assuming that you can re-use content simply because it is publicly-available or on the internet.

A small point to @sadieshavingashindig: at least in the UK, the term 'author' is used to designate the creator of copyright for literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, so @Luredbyapomegranate has not strayed as badly as you think. In fact, if you want to be as technically accurate as possible, Luredbyapomegranate should have referred to difficulties in finding the "copyright owner", as this may not be the author (i.e., photographer) where the photographer has, for example, assigned rights to someone else.

Also, can you be sure that you haven’t done this in past posts and not been caught? You might want to inform yourself and then check all your posts.

Are you completely sure the contact is from the original site you took the image from and not some scam? Maybe ask them to make a request for payment through your solicitor?

They can sue you for breach of copyright, but should do it through their lawyer rather thsn approaching you directly.
Seek legal advice

I’d tend to disagree. It would reflect very poorly on them if they engaged a solicitor and attempted to sue OP without even asking politely first. Courts don’t like being used for things that can resolved out of court.