Original link: https://www.williamlong.info/archives/7259.html
On August 15, a photographer posted an article stating that “the photos I took were sued for infringement by Visual China, and they also claimed more than 80,000 yuan.” The incident quickly aroused heated discussions among netizens, and topics related to “Visual China” appeared on Weibo’s hot search list one after another.
Dai Jianfeng, a well-known domestic photographer, posted on Weibo and Moments on the 15th that he received a call from Visual China today, claiming that the official account infringed and used 173 of their photos, and he wanted to compensate them more than 80,000 yuan. The “infringing photo” turned out to be his own work. Dai Jianfeng said that these works of his have never cooperated with Visual China, and have not uploaded their gallery, so they have become the copyright of Visual China.
Dai Jianfeng said that he found that the 173 photos sent by Visual China were taken successively over the past ten years, and some of them were published on his official account and Weibo, but the works on social platforms are watermarked And it is not a high-resolution picture. Previously, some of his works have also cooperated with foreign gallery websites, but he has never cooperated with Visual China, nor uploaded photos to the gallery of Visual China.
The screenshot of the email provided by Dai Jianfeng shows that Visual China said: “Recently, through monitoring, our company found that in the usage scenarios of your company’s WeChat public account and website, 173 visual works that our company has copyright-related rights have been used without authorization. Our company’s copyright management system has compared and checked, and has not found any authorization records for the above-mentioned visual content.”
Dai Jianfeng introduced that Visual China gave him two solutions, and the deadline was August 18 to reply. The first is the cooperation between the two parties. He will purchase the copyright material package from the Visual China Material Library website. The purchase quantity is not less than the number of used (173) pictures. The unit price of each picture is 300 yuan, and the cooperation period is 1 year. After the cooperation agreement is signed, the responsibility for the previous use of pictures can be directly exempted. The second option is a settlement between the two parties, and he will pay Visual China 173 pictures, each 500 yuan, a total of 86,500 yuan.
Dai Jianfeng expressed his puzzlement: “I don’t know how my work has become the copyright of Visual China, and I am required to pay compensation. This is the first time I have encountered it after more than ten years of work.”
Dai Jianfeng introduced that he had authorized his work to be used by a friend company, and the friend company also reported that he had received a call from Visual China, and was also asked for certain compensation by Visual China. What he wants to know is, where did Vision China get his photos for sale, how many companies sued with his photos, and how much profit did they get?
On the afternoon of the 15th, according to media reports, Chai Jijun, the founder of Visual China, responded to the incident, saying that it was a misunderstanding and he had contacted the photographer.
On the morning of August 16, in response to Visual China’s previous response to the copyright of the picture, the photographer “Jeff’s Starry Sky Journey” responded again on his personal Weibo: “I don’t accept your point of view. I have checked with Stocktrek, Stocktrek clearly informed me: Visual China has no right to sell my work, nor does it have any copyright of my work. Getty has no right to sublicense my work again. There is no misunderstanding here. Up to now, you are still illegally selling my work online , lied to me and others that you own the copyright of the work and claimed. Please stop your infringement immediately!”
On August 16, Ryan, the head of Stocktrek Images, said, “Dai Jianfeng has notified us, and I am trying to contact Getty Images to ask them to take down his pictures.”
Ryan also revealed some of the key elements of the agreement between the two parties. According to the agreement between Dai Jianfeng and Stocktrek Images, Stocktrek Images will not sell Dai Jianfeng’s related works in mainland China. “From now on, I can no longer allow his photos to appear on websites in mainland China.”
Ryan said, “Dai Jianfeng has no relationship with Getty Images, these photos were obtained through my company inventory. In fact, Getty Images should not have redistributed these photos to anyone, but they redistributed these photos to people in China. Distributor VCG (Vision China) in mainland China. So I am contacting Getty Images to try to retract these photos and take them down.”
Ryan also believes that Visual China does not own the copyright of these photos of Dai Jianfeng.
As of the close at 15:00 on the 16th, the total market value of Visual China has evaporated by more than 500 million yuan from the previous day, falling to 11.51 billion.
Lawyer Interpretation
According to Jiemian News, You Yunting, a senior partner of Shanghai Dabang Law Firm and an intellectual property lawyer, wrote that many reporters asked me whether Visual China’s licensing fees to authors constituted a crime of fraud? After I read it initially, I felt that Visual China’s statement stated that it only had the right to sell pictures, but in practice it turned into a picture rights protection, and it may not have obtained any rights at all, which is a bit out of thin air. In the case of obtaining a relatively large amount of authorization fee, if the circumstances are serious, it will be suspected of fraud:
1. Looking at the statement of Visual China, they only have the right to sell pictures, but do not have copyright authorization and corresponding rights protection rights for pictures works. The use behavior pays hundreds of yuan for each picture authorization fee.
2. The nature of this behavior is that there is no right to defend the rights. If it is negligent, it is suspected of impersonating the rights and infringing the rights of the copyright owner of the picture.
3. If it is deliberate, and it is a large-scale and widespread behavior of the company, in addition to civil infringement, it is suspected of extorting a large amount of property from others with fabricated facts and concealed truths, which is suspected of fraud.
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