Another case of copyright infringement has come to light this week as two agencies have been ordered to pay $1.2 million in damages for using photographs acquired through Twitter. Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Getty Images have been penalised by a US Jury, adding fuel to the fire in the debate concerning how images made public on Twitter can be used commercially by third parties.

This specific case dates back to 2010 when freelance photographer, Daniel Morel, took photographs of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake and uploaded them to Twitter. They were subsequently passed on to Getty images and published without the photographer’s permission.

This debate has been rife throughout 2013; we’ve written about a number of new developments throughout the year, although this has been the most high-profile case to date.  Twitter has previously stated that users maintain exclusive rights to any photographs featured on their site.

What do you think? We’re interested to see further developments in the case, especially considering the sheer volume of images uploaded to Twitter on a daily basis.