Twitter photos stolen by AFP and Getty Images

A federal jury in the United States ruled in Friday that the Agence France-Presse and famous photo agency Getty Images Should compensate a freelance photographer for 1.2 million of dollars for unauthorized use of its Twitter-posted photos.

The freelance photographer, named Daniel Mollers Daniel Morel, was pictured in the case of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where more than 250,000 people were killed.

According to Joseph Baio Joseph Baio, Morel's attorney, the jury ruled that the photo was used without Morel's authorization and that AFP and Getty Images deliberately violated the copyright law.

The case, for the first time, shows how a photograph of an individual user publicly released on social media should be used by third parties for commercial purposes. "We believe that this is the first time that the defendant company or other large digital photo-authorizing party was convicted of a violation of the Copyright Act," Baio said in an e-mail. ”

Lawyers for AFP and Getty Images have not commented.

U.S. District Judge Erison Nassan, Alison Nathan, in charge of the case, last January ruled that two companies were responsible for the infringement.

At the time of the infringement, an AFP editor found Morel's photo from another Twitter user's account and offered it to Getty Images. The photos were then released to Getty Images's clients, including several television networks in the United States and the Washington Post.

The trial was mainly to determine the amount of compensation morel should be awarded, which depended largely on the deliberate infringement of copyright by AFP and Getty Images. Baio said 1.2 million dollars was the highest amount of compensation that could be made under the Copyright Act, after AFP had requested that the amount of compensation be set at $120,000.

Other news organizations that forwarded Morel photos had already reached a settlement, and the terms of the settlement agreement were not disclosed. The news agencies include The Washington Post, CBS, ABC and CNN.

In the trial, Getty images lawyer Massia Paul, Marcia Paul, said Morel asked the jury to "make it the world's most rewarding news photographer". Joshua KAUFMAN, AFP correspondent Yas Kaufman, said the infringement was a careless mistake, and that Twitter user who forwarded Morel photos should be held responsible for the mistake. He believes the AFP editors thought the photos could be spread openly.

After Morel pointed out the infringement of Agence France-Presse, Agence France-Presse filed a lawsuit against Morel in 2010, asking Morel to declare that AFP had not infringed its copyright. Morel subsequently filed a counterclaim. AFP initially believed that Twitter's user terms allowed for the use of these photos. However, Nassan said in January this year that Twitter's rules allowed for the forwarding of photos, but did not authorize photographs to be used for commercial purposes.