Can you hack it? An awesome film about hackers and outside of the box thinkers, innovators, people who love to help. In a world that embraces the status quo there is a little chance to make a change. It’s sad but true. Galileo Galiei just escaped the life sentence by complying but then he added “yet the earth moves”.

It’s really difficult to understand that businesses and governments punish ethical hackers instead of awarding them for drawing attention to vulnarabilities in their systems. Pride and fear of the truth lead these organisations to think that ethical hacking is a crime. However, motive is the ultimate judge of a person’s action and by that law ethical hackers do not comit crime.

The world hasn’t changed, let it be Galileo Galilei or Adrian Lamo outside of the box thinkers are persecuted, mocked and cast out of the society. Yet, the world needs people who are ready to change everything.

Are you going to change the world?

I just came across a discussion today and I was fascinated by the sheer ignorance of Getty Images as to what the web is all about : sharing. A victimised web designer writes:

This is a lesson learned for anyone building their own web site, or commissioning a site to built on their behalf – it’ll probably seem obvious to most of you.

I’ve been working through the night for months trying to build a business and attract customers. So far, the only thing I seem to attract is lawyers.

I designed and built mycompany.com (a previous venture) myself, and used images that I found in Google image search that did not have any copyright notice associated with them.
I’ve just received a letter from Getty Images legal department invoicing me for £1000 for including one of their images on one my site.
The image was just included alongside some content on a page that was deep inside the site – I wouldn’t have dreamt of using it had I known that there would be any payment associated. I’d never heard of Getty Images, nor did I have any idea of the price.

The letter from Getty also indicates that if you employ contractor or third party company to build your site, you are still ultimately responsible for the content and honouring copyright of any content used on the site – so it’s worth getting written confirmation of rights to all images on your site.
I’ve learned the hard way that you can only use images where permission is explicitly granted to do so.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas? I’ve obviously removed the image, and am seeking legal advice.

I don’t know how Getty dares to do such a thing. They should sue google, not the user. If google can show a copyrighted image among their FREE image search results a user will think it’s free. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s common sense. Getty should have instructed Google not to show its copyrighted images at all. That would solve this problem once for all.

I’m also amazed by the authority Getty wants to portray. A web designer used an image on his website, then he removed it so what’s the big deal? Clearly, Getty fears loosing their business because the Internet is about the people and their content and NOT about big businesses. The same ridiculous fight is going on between file sharing users and big music labels. They will slowly give in because people are the power and business can’t live without people.

I consider Getty’s misused authority as a very ugly and unjust approach to business. As for Google it was a very bad user experience which could have been avoided.

During my career I had 2-3 claims over photographs used on my websites. However, these cases were initiated by the author of the photographs and not by Getty or other stock photography site. I respectfully removed the copyrighted images from my website and the issue was solved. I for one do not understand the hoo-ha around this issue. If someone wants to use my design, photo or art and they did not ask my permission I would simply ask the site owner to remove it. And that’s it. I don’t know why it’s necessary to play the big artist and claim big bucks for something that was found for free on google. I strongly disagree. Getty seems to be detached from the reality.

To use a “detection system” to find their images used “unlawfully” shows that they enjoy this game because it’s good money for them. They have high paid lawyers and the user doesn’t. So they win. Not for long. Next to settling the issue with Google they should rather invent a system prohibiting to copy/download their images “unlawfully” instead of suing individuals.

Just read a discussion where yet another person writes about their frustration with telesales:

Well, I’m registered on the Telephone Preference Service but it doesn’t stop an unknown number from persistently calling me at least once a day, but never at a moment when I can actually take the call and tell them to sling it. Of course, they don’t leave a message. Ever. Which means I have to put my phone on silent so they don’t disturb me, which in turn means I frequently miss calls or texts I need to get. If I find out who these people are, I will be paying them a visit, late at night, with a baseball bat with a nail through it. (If it’s you and you’re reading this, you have been warned!)

This system is broken. It doesn’t work.