In September last year, the court ruled a default judgment in favour of Grumpy Cat Ltd. The company was awarded damages of US$100,000 per defendant.
If the payments were made in full, the company would win more than US$24m.
Curtis earned just over US$1 from the sale. In the six years she had been running her store, she had generated about US$200 in revenue.
This is why copyright laws are a joke to the public. Corporations can infringe with wanton abandon and pay pennies on the dollar as just a cost of doing business. Random nobody makes a simple mistake and gets raked over the coals for ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND times what she actually made.
By this logic, what does AI owe? Quadrillions? More than every currency that exists combined?
Yeah. I’d love to see what the courts have to say about everyone’s personal photos and art or writing being scraped for profit without permission or compensation
Edit: Ps. Meta did not allow Australian users to ‘opt out’. And the companies involved have
most likelyalmost inevitably stolen images of children.How can you call that logic? Clearly, as she must pay $24m for a copyright claim, then those corporations ought to also pay around $24m for their legal obligations.
Per artist they violated, which is a lot of different artists that they have stolen from.
The company was awarded damages of US$100,000 per defendant.
“Damages”
“Default judgement”, meaning nobody turned up to plead their case in whatever court and jurisdiction this was in.
So this woman sold 1 shirt, someone else sold 275,000, someone else sold 1200 coffee mugs, and so on and so forth until Grumpy Cat Enterprises™ gets the shits and goes to court with a case against multiple plaintiffs. Then in the absence of any defense all the alleged guilty parties get slapped with a default USD100K. The lawyers take 60 percent for fees and GCE gets a potential income of a few million or so.
All of which means very fucking little if the judgement is in East Texas and you’re in South East Asia as it’s going to be pretty tough to collect, but it might mean something if you live in Australia. Being a civil matter, it’s pretty unlikely to go any further than being a note in a file somewhere, I’m not even sure if this could get on to Australian credit reports.
But the single sale of a shirt just before all this happened sounds extremely suspicious, like a fishing expedition to get enough people to make it worthwhile to go to court.
alleged guilty parties get slapped with a default USD100K
This is inhumane and should be abolished completely.
And was originally intended to protect the rando, iirc (and I may not be).
You’re right. The intent of copyright was ostensibly to protect artists’ ability to make a living off their work.
The problem for Curtis was one item she sold: a T-shirt of a frowning purple and yellow cat. She said the sale had been made just before the US lawsuit was launched against her. The T-shirt had sat unsold for years on her site.
Conspiracy theory: the lawyers purchased that shirt so they could launch a stronger lawsuit against her.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least
It’s actually common practice. See if someone will do the thing they’re offering to do. Offering it is a weak case. Doing it makes the case a slam dunk
haha wow, “intellectual property” is a scam
Show the fucking shirt.
Kate Beaton on BlueSky: “These guys took their famous catchphrase from my comic, but okay.”
