avatarSusie Kearley

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My $420 Story on Beating a Copyright Troll Went Viral in a Week!

A nice surprise when I returned from vacation

British money © Susie Kearley

I’ve just returned from my holiday in Suffolk to find July is my best month on Medium ever, because a single story that I submitted just before I left has earnt over $420 while I’ve been away.

The story follows a blogger who was sued for using a Creative Commons image without full accreditation. It's interesting because this case made it to court, while many such cases are settled out of court.

However, once in court, this case was dismissed by the Judge.

Why was it dismissed? The person who filed the lawsuit had had very little success making money from photographic sales. Instead, he was making most of his money by suing people who use his Creative Commons images without proper accreditation. (source)

People who pursue lawsuits in this manner are known as ‘copyright trolls’ and they often rely on out of court settlements of make their money.

The photographer argued that he lost out on sales and revenues because of the blogger’s failure to credit the image properly, but the court didn’t agree. It appears that he was unable to demonstrate significant loss, so the case was dismissed.

The story got a fabulous response, with lots of different opinions and a few arguments breaking out in the comments. Someone dropped a link saying this copyright troll had actually been banned from posting his images on WikiMedia Commons because of this behaviour.

WikiMedia Commons Administrators reported that he’d uploaded 21 images and begun 50 legal actions…

We know that 50 of his cases have gone to court, we do not know how many settlement agreements have been entered into before matters got to court.

The scale of actions here indicate a use of Commons completely antithetical to its objectives; it’s essentially a Prenda Law type model. Commons should have no part in it. (source)

They went on to call his behaviour a ‘wholly repugnant business model’, and added forced attribution to his work, with a warning about legal action if those attributions are removed.

The story has received 82 comments so far, accrued over $420 in earnings and I received four new referred members while I was away as an added bonus. So July is going rather well!

The story wasn’t chosen for further distribution by Medium, but it has surpassed my expectations anyway.

Want to read the whole story? Here you go…

And another related story…

Here’s my referral link…

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