3 replies to this topic

[praveen]

The Corbis photo agency has filed a lawsuit against TemplateMonster.com and Ultravertex.com, web sites it claims are engaged in large-scale piracy of stock photos. The lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court in the Southern District of Florida, seeks $109 million in damages.

Corbis accuses TemplateMonster of selling web site templates that include Corbis stock photos, thereby infringing on Corbis's copyrights and encouraging customers to do the same. It also accuses Ultravertex of running a stock photo subscription service – priced at $49.95 for a six-month membership – that re-licensed Corbis photographs without authorization. In total, 623 Corbis images were available through the sites, the lawsuit says.

full story

[kensplace]

109 million for 623 images? Pricey images those.

Found this bit disturbing

The judge granted permission for the lawsuit to be served to Lognikov via e-mail, something that is extremely unusual.

[manager]

Maybe 109 million is a bit steep, but it sends a clear message to those who think it's ok to steal other people's work and make money out of it.

TreV

[vangogh]

That is pretty steep though I'm sure there was some way the damages were calculated to arrive at that figure. It is a clear message over copyright infringement or will be once the case is settled.

I doubt even a case with this kind of price tag will end up keeping people from 'borrowing' other's work online. Seems something we're just going to have to live with in some form much the way theft is built into the budget of most retailers.

On a tangent, having looked behind the code of some of those template monster templates and seen far too many of the designs, I can't say I would be sorry to see less of them online.