If they are public domain you can do with it whatever you want. Also republish them, charge money for it or limit usage. That's the point of it. So everything is fine.
BUT, if someone prints the images and ignores any usage limits and then gets sued you might just get a jail free card because you can claim that's anyway public domain.
> Also republish them, charge money for it or limit usage
Of your copy or derivative work, not of the public domain one you copied. The fact that they tried to force their limits on other people using the public domain works is what is the issue here and is not fine.
> you might just get a jail free card because you can claim
That seems entirely the wrong way around. Getty knows it is public domain because that is where they got it from. The fact that they sue for damages despite this should put them in contempt of court and not me in a position where I have to defend myself.
You are dead right but I wonder if the article is badly representing the story or her lawyers were bad because Getty won the lawsuit anyways. Perhaps she did download the photo from Google images or something and it did have Getty watermark in it when she used it. Otherwise I see this as a slam dunk against Getty.
From the representation of her story in the article, it hardly seems like Getty has caused her a billion dollars in damages. It's a slam dunk that Getty did something wrong, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily owe her any money.
