- https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-laws...
- https://www.techdirt.com/2019/04/01/getty-images-sued-yet-ag...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Images#Copyright_enforce...
Selling public domain things is entirely legal. Claiming they own those images and suing others for using them is not - they're public domain.
The article you linked makes the point that at least one civil suit did give damages for dealing with a bogus DMCA takedown, but that it was unrelated to the perjury provision.
You can use public domain images for profit. It's not surprising this was thrown out.
> It's comical that now it's exactly the same allegation, but with the sides inverted, now it's Getty trying to sue an AI company for using their public domain images.
Where does it say they're suing over the public domain images in their collection? Their collection is not entirely public domain images. Their suit claims for the copyright works by staff photographers, third parties that have assigned copyright, and images licensed to them by contributing photographers. In addition, they're claiming for the titles and captions which they created and are themselves copyrighted.
It's not the "exact same allegation", and there's really no relation between the facts of the cases here.
The outcome will be, Stable Diffusion settling and licensing the images from Getty Images. If OpenAI was able to do it with Shutter-stock, so can Stable Diffusion.
1. The requested licensing fee approaches infinity
2. Getty Images simply refuses to license images to anyone who will use AI to create derivative works