In what was a surprise decision to many of us, a US court awarded a young British photographer, Lara Jade Coton , almost $130,000 in a copyright case over the use of a self-portrait she had made at the age of 14 on the cover of a DVD re-issue of the hardcore porno video apparently about a photographer and his model, ‘Body Magic.’
You can read more details on the Russian Photos blog, and also in a post made by the photographer on DeviantART when she discovered the abuse of her image in 2007, when she was only 17; there are also a number of pretty sickening comments to that message, as well as some sympathetic and sensible advice. Perhaps the most obvious was to find a good copyright lawyer and sue – which she did.
Coton also reports the successful result on her blog, with a link to the coverage of it on Plagiarism Today web site.
The surprise was the amount of the settlement awarded to photographer Lara Jade Coton, who had not registered the copyright of her photograph, which was apparently stolen from the DeviantART web site, with the US Copyright Office.
Received wisdom (and much legal advice) suggests that unless you register you can only claim minimal damages as opposed to the “punitive damages” available for the abuse of registered work.
Of course it was not just copyright abuse, but also defamation and other related offences and Coton’s lawyer had claimed $430,000 damages. The judge actually disallowed a claim for punitive damages on the grounds that the defendant’s actions lacked malice, although his actions towards her complaint appear malicious and dismissive.
The case got wide publicity in print and on the web in 2007, and there were reports that some of the more negative comments posted in response to these articles came from those involved in stealing the image.
This settlement is great news for Coton, but also for all the rest of us whose work is in danger of being ripped off by US businesses. Until now they could be fairly sure that most non-US based photographers would not have registered work their at the US Copyright Office and would thus not pursue the matter through the courts where if successful they could expect only minimal damages. This case should at least make them think again and perhaps decide not to steal images from the web – or if they do and are caught out, to come to a reasonable settlement.
Coton was fortunate to find “a wonderful lawyer in Florida Mr Richard Harrison of Allen Dell PA” who was prepared to take on her case, doing a lot of work in his spare time to help her. She also has some good advice to all photographers, “be wise about where you upload your images, the size you upload them and be smart about the steps you can take towards finding legal help when youve found your image being used inappropriately.” We should all congratulate her for taking on the fight.
