[briandear]

The right to use that image. Not the right to create derivative from it. Also licensing depends on end-use and can vary depending on the degree of use — a small print run of 500 copies of an ad using an image often has a different license cost than using that same image for a national ad campaign.

Terms of licensing are super clear when you buy stock work. What makes no sense is why the post office would even bother — there are plenty of public domain photos of the statue. Or they could have just had a mailman go shoot one and pay him $1000.

This is just incompetence, there wasn’t any ambiguity to what they were doing. They admit they used an image for commercial gain without knowing they were infringing — that’s negligence. They used that image because they knew it would sell more stamps. Even a basic legal review would have caught this — this sort of clearance/rights due dilligence is standard stuff. This wasn’t editorial and thus “fair use” would’t apply — this was used specifically to sell stamps. They can’t argue parody, satire or any of the numerous cases that might constitute fair use.

The post office made $70 million in pure profit from their misappropriation, the original art that led to that profit ought to be compensated accordingly. Had even a baby lawyer been consulted, they could have avoided this mess. Being a government agency doesn’t exempt you from the law.