I’m not going to talk about Vista, so relax. I’m going to talk about Corbis – a company founded by one William Gates III, and based on the same fantasy that has infested Microsoft. That’s the copyright fantasy.

Corbis is, I believe, number two in the market for stock photograph distribution. Getty is probably bigger, Jupiter a little smaller, and the three account for about 70 percent of the world’s trade in photos. All three have been buying up rights, and losing friends and – here’s the important point – money.

Here’s a quote from a professional photographer: “Corbis and Getty are able to use their monopolistic position to set higher prices than the rest. The percentage that goes to the photographer varies between about 35 percent and zero.”

He went on: “All agencies are now striving to achieve ‘fully owned content’, which means the photographer gets nothing [beyond an initial fee]. Much Corbis work is commissioned on that basis – a one-off fee for full rights assignment.” Royalties? Bah.

In the circumstances, you’d expect photographers to be vocal in their criticism, because before the two giants got into stock photos, the agency normally got no more than half the fee, and the photographer’s royalty per sale was the other 50 percent.

Now Corbis is threatening a web site for using one of its photos without paying, having detected its watermark. There’s nothing wrong with the picture technically, but it’s hard to imagine anybody actually using it if they knew they’d have to pay for the privilege. Corbis says the picture is worth over £1,000 and has sent lawyers’ letters to that effect.

Legally, Corbis is in the right. In reality, it is painting itself into a corner, because no web designer will ever pay that sort of money for a stock shot. But once they realise how Corbis polices the internet, they will start making darned sure they use free clipart.

And in the public mind, I suspect, Corbis will start to be seen as a rapacious parasite, giving nothing to the creative artist, and ambushing unsuspecting home page designers. We’ve seen what that sort of tactic does for the RIAA, which has been suing teenagers for thousands of “lost” dollars on CD downloads; a PR disaster.

Digital rights management is dead. It’s time we buried the rotting corpse.