Does this apply to Facebook and other social media sites

[jgessentials]

Hello
I just received a letter for my business website and will be watching all your videos before posting any additional questions.
But this made me wonder if this applies to Facebook as well were pictures are shared all the time.

Thank you in advance for your time and reply

[lucia]

Copyright law applies to images posted at Facebook. So in principle, you could be sued for copyright violations if you post something on your facebook page. However, I'm not aware of Getty suing anyone for Facebook postings.

[Mulligan]

That's an interesting question... because it appears from what people have written about their experiences here on ELI as well as on other forums that if Getty thought they had a decent chance at making an easy $875, they'd sue an Argentinian cowboy who's never even heard of the Internet for having a tattoo resembling one of their "Rights Managed" images on his horse's ass.

Because Getty Images financially benefits by ripping from the branches the low-hanging fruit with their aggressive picking, there must be some legal or political reason they're not mailing settlement demand letters to Facebook members for posting images allegedly registered and in the Getty catalogs.

If there wasn't a compelling reason, I'm sure Getty would have jumped into that pool of easy money with both feet. My God, can you imagine the potential profit here? Holy Slivers of the True Cross, there's a gigantic pool of guilty copyright infringing bastards on Facebook who are illegally posting zillions of cheesy thumbnails that no doubt reside somewhere deep in one of Getty's vaults of purchased images.

[stinger]

I don't know a lot about facebook, so this is just conjecture, but perhaps, picscout doesn't know how to do it.  I believe there is some security built into facebook.

My understanding is that if Person A posts something, they may be liable for posting an image to which someone else holds the copyright. 

However, if I see my friend Person A's posting, and I share it, I am not liable.  That's because the act of sharing is providing a link to the original post.

I am not sure if/how picscout can trace something I may have shared back to Person A who would be the only person liable.  If Person A is not in their friend network, it might be more work than those trolls want to do.

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

I personally think it comes down to the fact that companies like Facebook and others have lawyers on their staff, you never see Getty going after large companies because they can defend themselves.

it reminds me of a case where Getty sent a letter to a person over a public image photo of an F 16 fighter jet which was purchased in a template from Intuit. After refusing to listen to the letter recepient he file a complaint with the attorney general and wrote to Intuit, who replied we will handle it. The next thing you know there is a letter to the attorney general from Getty stating they were pleased to inform them they were no longer pursuing the case.

I would have loved to have seen letter that Intuit wrote Getty but I am sure that Getty realized they were in for a fight with lawyers and backed off.

[crazycatlady]

Stinger, I think you are correct.  With Facebook, the only place the image is actually uploaded to is the individual user's content area (Photo Albums).  Let's say I upload a photo of my cat to Facebook. The image resides in one of my albums. Stinger decides to share it with Greg.  Just by clicking "Share", it appears on Stinger's timeline or Facebook page, but he did not move the image, just shared a link.  The image resides only on my Album. If I decide to delete it, it will disappear off of both my album and Stinger's timeline. But only the person who originally uploaded it actually moved the image file from his computer to the Facebook system itself...everyone else passing it along is essentially sharing a link back to the original image.

[lucia]

That said: a person uploaded. So in principle, that person could be sued. But Getty probably has technical and legal difficulties:
1) The have a hard time connecting the image to the person who uploaded.
2) They have to log in to view many of the images.
3) As much as Getty says commercial use doesn't matter and so on and so on, they know that the courts aren't going to award very high fines for someone posting an image in a place that could-- ultimately-- only be viewed from a password protected account.
4) The PR would be really, really bad. Lots of people have Facebook accounts.
5) A large fraction of uses would plausibly be fair use.