[Clipart] Librarians be aware of http://www.freeclipartnow.com

[Jon Phillips]

I have another great way to resolve these things. Submit more original clipart.

Jon

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Greg Bulmash
<oneminuteinspirations at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:41 AM, Francis Bond <bond at ieee.org> wrote:
>>> Question:
>>> This email has me worried that even PD and CC images may not be truly free
>>> for any use. Are they?
>>
>> Yes they are.
>>
>> What we are worrying about here, is that someone may upload a file that they
>> do not have the right to release as public domain, but still claim it is
>> public domain.   However, if you download the file in good faith, then I
>> think you shouldn't need to worry.
>
> If you download the file in good faith, but the image is not really
> PD/CC, the owner can still come after you and cost you a lot of money
> in lawyers to defend yourself.
>
> Since you're in Singapore, though, they couldn't sue you in absentia
> in the U.S. and then go to Singapore and get the judgement enforced.
> Judges in one jurisdiction usually don't like judges in another
> jurisdiction telling them what to do, so anyone wishing to sue you
> would either have to follow a bunch of arcane rules to sue
> internationally, or would have to find a lawyer in Singapore to sue on
> their behalf there.
>
> Once the suit was filed... in the U.S., you could claim innocent
> infringement, which carries a penalty of just a couple hundred
> dollars, not the potentially massive statutory damages of
> $30,000-$150,000 per infringement that they'd threaten you with. But
> in the U.S., the cost of defending the suit and getting to a ruling
> that it was innocent infringement could cost you $20,000 or more, so
> they use that to get you to pay them $4,000 or $5,000 to go away.
>
> Sadly, if someone submits art that isn't PD, you use it, you get
> caught using it, and the owner is a jerk, you're still in for some
> pain, because they don't have to prove anything until the case comes
> to trial, but they can cost you a lot of money just getting to the
> beginning of the trial. So they can use the threat of a trial to make
> you pay more than they'd win at trial, just because it's cheaper for
> you to pay them off than fight them.
>
> But, honestly, in a society where anyone can sue for anything and you
> usually have no recourse against them for filing a frivolous lawsuit,
> you're never safe from being sued. You could draw all the art yourself
> and be sued by someone who claims your art looks too much like theirs
> and thus must be an infringing derivative work.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but I'm being sued over using art I thought was safe
> and I've had to have a couple of OCAL submitters and one artist who
> created drawings for me on contract sign declarations to help me prove
> that the guy suing me is... mistaken.
> _______________________________________________
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> clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
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>



-- 
Jon Phillips
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