No. 71036 N. v. Newspaper

Description

Photographer who used BY-SA licenses on his photographs had some photographs used in a Newspaper. The newspaper did not provide proper attribution. The newspaper had also used Wikipedia text without proper attribution.

Case summary

This case was decided by a private Rabbinical Tribunal. Thus, it is not an official Israeli court opinion.

[Please note: This summary is based on a google translation of the original Hebrew text. As such, it may contain errors.]

Newspaper used some of Photographers photos in an issue of the newspaper without proper attribution. Photographer contact Newspaper about the omission. Newspaper offered Photographer 400 Sheqels, the price they would have paid a photographer to take a similar photo. Newspaper also corrected their copyright policy going forwards. Photographer did not accept the 400 Sheqel offer and brought suit for copyright infringement.

The court first asked the parties to come to an agreement, which they were not able to do.

The court, being a Rabbinical court, analyzed the case under both the Torah and the Israel Copyright Act. The court held that there is a religious obligation (probably "moral" if better translated) to comply with the attribution terms of the CC licenses. The court found the Newspaper's offer of 400 Sheqel to be below the value of the benefit the Newspaper had received from using the photo and noted that the Israel copyright act provides for damages up to 100,000 Sheqel.

The court found for the photographer and awarded a sum of 3,500 Sheqel.