When the RIAA sues some teenager for sharing music on Kazaa, it’s no longer news. After a while, the legal machinations gets old. Quick. So, when a media company gets sued for copyright infringement, that’s news. Or is it? While browsing through Pravda Studios, LLC v. Corbis Corporation et al., I came across a lot of the standard boilerplate:
This action is brought in response to a classic case of copyright infringement, specifically the unauthorized copying and commercial, for-profit use, copying, display and distribution of Plaintiff’s live action, motion picture, film footage entitled PRAVDA B-STOCK: SPAIN.
This is a serious accusation. So, I had to find out what exactly Corbis had done to engage in a classic case of copyright infringement. To me, a classic case would involve Corbis ripping the video off someone else’s website and using it in their own marketing material. That’s classic. Instead, what really occurred was that Pravda allegedly submitted their video to Corbis, and Corbis allegedly lost it. Huh? That doesn’t sound like a classic case of copyright infringement to me.