At exactly 1:10pm on Friday November 22, 2013 In the shadow of City Hall, in lower Manhattan, in room 506 of the U.S. District Court for the southern district, a jury of 4 woman and 3 men returned to the courtroom where they had been instructed only one day earlier to decide whether Agence France Presse and Getty Images has willfully infringed the rights of photographer Daniel Morel and, if so, how much Mr. Morel should be compensated for their actions.
A few minutes earlier the courtroom had been jarred awake by a U.S. Marshal entering with a note for Judge Alison Nathan announcing the jury had already reached verdicts on the 28 questions related to the charges against Agence France Presse and Getty Images.
The room was silent as the teams of lawyers for Daniel Morel, AFP and Getty Images waited breathlessly along with a mere dozen spectators in a courtroom that could easily hold over 100, as judge Nathan studied the jury’s verdicts. She then proceeded to read the decisions to those anxiously waiting. Quickly she came to question #3 – did AFP willfully violate the copyright of Daniel Morel by using his photographs of the January 2010 earthquake without his permission? The answer was yes, which resulted in gasps from the courtroom. Same answer for Getty Images. Had they violated Mr. Morel’s copyright? Yes. And in answer to question #5 what should the compensation be for this willful act: $1.2 million total for the 8 illegally used photos, which also resulted in an audible reaction from the audience.
Afterwards there was some discussion among the spectators over how severe the punishment had been for the two super sized photo image companies. The spectators were further surprise by how the two companies had handled Daniel Morel’s images.
As far as anyone could remember, this was the first time a major news organization had been found guilty and responsible for the copyright infringement of someone’s digital images transmitted over the Internet.
The case had resulted from the January 12, 2010 Haitian earthquake that Daniel Morel had photographed and transmitted to the world via Twitter. The story was complicated by the fact that a teenager from the Dominican Republic named Lisandro Suero had re-tweeted the photos with his name on them. At first AFP and Getty had only noticed the images with Suero’s name on them. But within a day it became known that Daniel Morel had actually made the images. AFP and Getty worked to remove the images but then got into a dispute with Daniel Morel over their unauthorized use of his images. That eventually lead the U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan where in January of this year the federal court and Judge Nathan ruled that that AFP and Getty Images had violated the U.S. Copyright Act and infringed on Mr. Morel’s copyright when they had used the mis-identified photographs of Mr. Morel without his permission. After that decision, the court was charged with determining whether AFP and Getty Images had acted willfully in their illegal use of the images. what resulted was the court case tried this month.
The decision is bound to become a landmark in the history of the rights of photographers against unauthorized use of images. It is also a wakeup call for photo agencies, publications and others, to be absolutely sure they have the permission and rights for photographs before they use them. From today forward, photographers can rejoice in the unambiguous fact that their Internet rights have been upheld by a federal court in the United States. Future violators will think twice before infringing again against photographers and their images.
Daniel Morel said he pursued the case “because someone had to fight for photographers.”
Robert Stevens writer/historian
