AFP and Getty have to pay $1.2 million to photographer for using image off Twitter

A freelance photojournalist has been awarded $1.2 million by a federal jury over the weekend after Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Getty Images made unauthorised use of photographs he posted to Twitter.

The jury had found that AFP and its US partner Getty Images had willfully violated the Copyright Act when they used photos posted by Daniel Morel on his Twitter account. The photos in the centre of the controversy were of the deadly Haiti earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people in 2010.

Image taken off Twitter puts AFP and Getty in trouble  (Image credit: Reuters)

An AFP editor found these images and distributed them to Getty Images. The pictures then found their way to multiple news outlets who subscribe online to Getty’s image services.

It had been determined in January by US District Judge Alison Nathan that the companies were indeed liable since they had willfully infringed on Morel’s copyrights. The maximum statutory penalty under the Copyrights Act is $1.2 million and Morel managed to secure it.

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Earlier, lawyers for AFP had argued that the infringement was an “innocent mistake” saying that a Twitter user who posted Morel’s images without attribution bore the responsibility for this error. It was believed that since it was on Twitter, they were posted for public distribution.

AFP filed the lawsuit in 2010 against Morel, seeking a declaration that it had not infringed on his copyrights, after Morel accused it of improper use. The photographer then filed his own counterclaims. AFP initially argued that Twitter’s terms of services permitted the use of the photos posted onto it but the judge found that the company’s policies allowed for users to post and Retweet images, but not use them commercially.

(With inputs from agencies)