Anyone or their clients out there received a letter from Getty Images claiming they are breaking copyright and owe them over a thousand $$ per image used?

Apparently this is something they have been up to in the US and UK and are now about to start trying on in Australia

Essentially they send out this multi page letter including a screen shot of the allegedly offending page and image and say you must pay eg $1350 within 21 days or else

I have been reading overseas forums and from what I can establish they have no foundation in law to do this and are relying solely on the intimidation of the receivers of the letter

Cheers
Angus

Just curious....why do you think there's no foundation for demanding money for IP/copyright infringement?

My thoughts are that while there's certainly (some level of) protection in some countries for webhosts/IT service providers, there's nothing in place to protect the end-clients who own and profit from the use of someone else's IP/material. I would think that if Getty did decide to follow up with a civil case, chances are they'd win and be awarded damages - hence making paying their requested figure quite an easy way out.

I'm just basing my statements on things I've seen happen in the hardware tech IP infringement scene, so things could be different here.....

Bit more info needed Angus. Is this your clients or your site?

Are you sure its them sending these notices? A fair few of their images or royalty free, and others are available at cost.

Easiest thing for me to do is to point everyone to this forum on the Federation of Small Businesses site in the UK

http://www.fsb.org.uk/discuss/forum_...D=194&PID=2956

The main points raised are

• can they prove they have the copyrights to the image
• how can they justify the charge they are asking
• how is someone meant to know if an image is copyrighted if they obtain it somewhere in good faith - eg from a site selling templates

The image in question was actually used on our design site and was there as a sample template for web design

The template itself was obtained from Boxed Art some 5 at least years ago I think. It was never used in the design of any site for a client and was solely on our site as an example

Now when I review the terms on the boxed art site it says the following

then this is followed up by

This is them washing their hands of any responsibility for the ownership of anything on their site and dropping it in the laps of their members who download anything - in our case a basic template

We obtained this template in good faith and anyway how exactly is one meant to ascertain if an image is copyrighted if it doesn't have a watermark to that effect on it?

Have a look at the thread I posted and you will see it has become quite an issue in the UK and to date there have been no known prosecutions by Getty - successful or otherwise

Instead it appears to be a case of intimidation and hitting up enough people so that they pay out of ignorance and fear

Needless to say we immediately removed the image from our site

Cheers
Angus

Angus,
Did you ask them for proof of copyright?

Not yet

The letter actually went to where we were about 4 years ago and I only got it cos an old neighbour saw it floating on the driveway after a storm and started to dry it out and rang me

No good deed goes unpunished as if he had missed it I would be in blissful ignorance

I did ring their 1800 number which is clearly a dummy as it it is just a recoding machine and tells you to leave your details and case number which I did so now just sitting back waiting for the fun to start

It all sounds a bot odd I think. Might be another "Nigeria" scam.

I got a letter from that Web Register lot and chucked it, what a wank that was.

I'm fairly sure they digitally mark all their images - how do you think they found out about it in the first place.

They could justify pricing by simply pointing to their huge number of customers who happily pay their huge fees.

The good faith thing is the only real 'logical' argument there - but I'm not sure it's one with any legal weight - especially for a web design company in the industry "blah blah blah"..etc.

Sounds like what most people would do (probably without repercussion). Probably shouldn't have emailed them back though...

Nope there's no watermark and as for finding it, from the thread I linked to they talk about a spider - picscout.com that goes through net somehow identifying them although I'm buggered if I know how - something to do with computers I think

I seriously recommend scanning that thread I linked to before posting here otherwise I will just be repeating what is there

Cheers
Angus

I do remember seeing a few threads about this type of thing awhile ago on WHT.COM

http://internetmadness.blogspot.com/...-getty-me.html

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...t=getty+images

End of the day what your selling or whats on your site is your responsibility.

Reasons why websites costs 5K plus and not 1K.

When you create a site you need to hand over to the client all content rights. This includes getty and other photobuckets.

Just cause you found it on Google Images does not make you an owner.

A few photo studios we work for actually give the images to getty to manage the copyright for them.

ummmm ok that's a pretty random post with no apparent reference to what has gone before

google images ??? not mentioned

handing over copyright web designer to client not relevant either but in fact if the designer was to say purchase and image in their own name then use it on a client's site that would still involve Getty coming after the site owner who would be blissfully ignorant of the fact the image was not licenced to them as they had employed what they believed was reputable designer

The site owner then becomes the unwitting victim

side note grrrrrr merkin spell checker in place

Hmm, makes me wonder if perhaps they are retaliating on BoxedArt by targeting their customers?

Stu

Angus not exactly posted about your site.

Just in general when people think that they can just use other peoples images etc.

Ah sure, absolutely that goes without saying that people who intentionally and knowingly use images that don't belong to them should be punished

Angus