[mike_1337]

I work for a company as a general IT guy, I'm in charge of the website etc.

I inherited the website from another web design company who had designed the website before i started working for this company. I've developed the website but kept aspects of the old design like the images and content.

This morning we received a notice of copyright infringement form Getty Images demanding £1.6k if we could not prove we had the license. I contacted the web design company and luckily they said the image was downloaded elsewhere and not from getty images and that if getty want to discuss further they should contact them instead of us.

Can they really just demand money like that? Dont they have to ask us to remove the image first and charge us if we refuse?

And how did they know that the image belongs to them? How did they find the image? If what the other design company is saying is true, then I dont think they should go around issuing fines when the image could have been downloaded from another site.

Bit of a scary situation for a beginner!

[Thomas Thomassen]

That's the reason why you include in your contract that all material given to you by the client is the client's responsibility. You can never know where it's coming from.

I suppose they can claim whatever they want if it's their work originally. Don't think there's a law that says they need to give a warning first. I mean, if someone steals your car, you don't give the thief a warning to return it before you go to the cops.

How they found it, I don't know. By chance I'd guess.

Yea, it's not a nice experience.

[Expat629]

Oy vey, what a situation!

Quote

Can they really just demand money like that? Dont they have to ask us to remove the image first and charge us if we refuse?

By the looks of it what they're doing is seeking damages - not a fine, which implies you broke a law, the police became involved, and you were convicted and ordered to pay - so it's a civil matter, i.e. they can handle it however they want. If you don't pay then they'll likely sue your company (if they haven't already - it's hard to tell by the description you gave. Were you served with legal documents?).

Court would be the forum in which you should state your case about downloading it from somewhere else, not your liability, etc. They are well within their rights to sue you, regardless of whether your company is guilty or innocent. Unfortunately people have been sued for a lot less, and Getty is probably counting on the fact that it'll take more than GBP1,600 to fight the case. Chances are they have a legal department that spends all day finding their images on websites and sending out these "scare" notices. I'll leave the morality of that type of corporate behaviour for another time.

[mike_1337]

No, we did not break the law, the police are not involved and we were not convicted. There are certain guidelines they have to follow and they are not following them. They are applying US techniques in the UK. Can Tesco sue you for buying a mars bar from Asda?

Made some research into this and found that Getty are well known for the bullying techniques but rarely actually take people to court over it. They send out heavy worded letters to frighten people into paying up. I do also believe that they are required to issue a C&D asking us to take it down first and not just issue an invoice. Thats the procedure with other copyright infringements like file sharing, you get a nice letter asking you to delete the files and stop sharing.

Ive come across some very interesting facts about this, Getty use a 'bot' called PicScout developed by an israeli company which scans websites for images, it can detect images whether it has been edited or not. This bot does not follow normal bot rules, it disguises itself as an user and will scan everywhere on your site regardless of your commands.

This could also be a lesson for people who use templates or stock photography, dont use them unless you know 100% where the images came from else you could be getting a letter just like this and you would be liable.

I agree with the cracking down on the thieves, its only fair for the photographers but the manner in which Getty go about it is just wrong.

In our case, we have confirmed that the image was downloaded from a different stock image website. We've replied to Getty and hope that will be it. Our legal team will not be bullied by extortion techniques. We are not thieves.

Heres a link to the thread: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread...highlight=getty

Very interesting read (Over 30 pages)

[bazzie]

If you have a decent Professional Indemnity policy this will respond for you, as most of them include infringement of IP rights... INsurance companies have paid out thousands to Getty...

[Expat629]

mike_1337, on Mar 15 2008, 01:13, said:

No, we did not break the law, the police are not involved and we were not convicted. There are certain guidelines they have to follow and they are not following them. They are applying US techniques in the UK. Can Tesco sue you for buying a mars bar from Asda?

Yes, they can... whether they are successful is another matter. But my point was, there is no official process to follow for civil dispute (unlike with the law) - if someone wants to sue you, they can. It doesn't matter what country you're in either.

I've been working with a company recently that was sued by a huge conglomerate for an absolute bullsh*t reason. Everyone knows it's bullying, including the media, but the fact remains that small companies don't usually have the money to fight these types of things and the big bully companies are counting on that.

Anyway, in that case their liability policy was a good one and did pay to fight the lawsuit. But it was a huge lesson for everyone involved that you don't need to do anything wrong in order to get sued.

[NeRo]

There was a case on Flickr where Rebekka (Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir) had some of her images copied and sold without her knowledge - here are a couple of links to start the story...

Wikipedia - Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir

Flickr - meaningless selfportrait

[By the way have a look at her photos they are stunning ]

[Rachael]

Quote

Can Tesco sue you for buying a mars bar from Asda?

No, because mars bars are actually owned by Mars, who have an agreement with both Tesco and Asda to allow them to sell their mars bars...

[BrownWarrior]

Thomas Thomassen, on Mar 14 2008, 18:31, said:

I suppose they can claim whatever they want if it's their work originally.

no they can only charge based on what the image is worth and if they are trying to extort you, you can take them to a tribunal... and they may even get fined for not playing nice or at least put in there place to warn others off using these tactics. and they cant just say the image is worth XXXXXXX it has to be really worth it (based on criteria like photographer, quality, significance stuff like that i would guess). so u might want to try and find out how much it is actually worth.

if you need advice on this matter or any other ip matter i highly recomend www.own-it.org

[mike_1337]

Rachael, on Mar 17 2008, 20:06, said:

No, because mars bars are actually owned by Mars, who have an agreement with both Tesco and Asda to allow them to sell their mars bars...

This photographer must have had agreements with Getty and the other stock image site as they both were selling it. This wasnt my work, but it has put me right off using stock photography if i risk getting sued for using images paid for.

[ErisDS]

It all sounds like bully tactics to me.

Of all the stuff that is said about it, people either pay or don't pay. Has anyone heard of anyone actually going to court over this?

If you can prove that you got the image elsewhere then your fine. Otherwise, just remove the image and consider the letter a warning.

Now you just need to get together with all the other innocent accused out there and sue Getty for harassment!!

[Richard King BWP]

I can give a lot of input to the OP on this.. for leagal reasons I wil not disuss this fully here

The OP can feel free to email me through my profile.

I am a freelance webdesigner and a PRO photographer, and have also unfortunatally been at the wrong end of one of these letters. However I managed a positive outcome

____

FWIW I happen to sell stock, and I know that my images have been moved from collection to collection as companies merged, and I have sold the same iamges on more than one site. For the claim to stick - they need to show you that they are the exclusive distributor of that image by showing you the agreement they have with the photographer. They never do this! as that would breach their confidentiallity agreement. Of course this could be played out in court - so far - that has not happened either.. they pass it to a secondary "bullying" debt collection agency.. who have to take at face value what they are told by the Stock photography company

The bill they send is dodgy too - irish VAT!, and they are billing an ammount you have not agreed to pay, and the terms are VERY SHORT, and the terms threatening

in summary

Is Getty the sole distributor of said image?
Can they prove it?
have they complied with the law in terms of VAT and the invoice and the ammount
Have they given you a reasonable chance to resolve the issue?

[mike_1337]

Got the second letter last week - All sounds a little desperate tbh 'We're going to give you one last chance to pay'

We big american company... pay us now

[Mad101daN]

mike_1337, on May 11 2008, 13:57, said:

Got the second letter last week - All sounds a little desperate tbh 'We're going to give you one last chance to pay'

We big american company... pay us now

Sorry to dig up an old thread.

But we have just had this happen to us, can you tell me what happened in your case ?

Thanks

Dan

[winjeel]

The best thing to do is to get a lawyer. They can demand that you pay up, as it really is copyright infringement. A photographer can upload and make available for sale an image via a number of portals, so it is possible for Company A to think that the image came from them, when it might have come via Company B. As a photographer, having an image stolen is exactly like having a car stolen; it costs me money to set up and shoot, maintain my photography, and so forth. In anycase, go looking for receipts, contracts, and all details of the origin of the image. If it is indeed stolen...

[dasmon777]

Sorry to reopen this thread but Getty have increased the speed and value of their fines.

There is a concerted campaign against site owners with Getty sending out thousands of these demands a week now. In most cases the site owners are completely unaware of any wrongdoing and Getty are being totally inflexible and unresponsive.

The fines are disproportionate to the value of the images and this needs to serve as a warning to all image users. The image you obtained in good faith from low cost or free sources may still have a stock code in it, if that is the case then your clients will receive a demand for payment in excess of £1500.

It could be as small as a shopping cart image (as was one case) or an image provided by a local photographer but also listed on Corbis or Getty.

Getty are will NOT listen to solid argument but will instead pass your details to a credit agency to obtain payment.

A client of mine received one recently over an image that wasn't even on her site together with a screen print of her site in which the image is not visible. Getty have refused to accept her claims and have passed the invoice to a debt collection agency.

It is clear that Getty are undertaking a persecutory approach to the issue of copyright infringement but are doing it in a way that is offensive and damaging to small business and site owners.

As a web developer myself all I want is to have access to good imagery for which I am prepared to pay a 'reasonable' fee for. We all know how long it takes sometimes to find the 'right' image.

Now we have to find the right image and thoroughly check the source and rights attributed.

Clearly Getty have decided that this is the way they want to do business. So in return I am going to be more selective over who I choose to get my images from. istockphoto, Corbis and Getty (all owned by Getty) have now lost any business they could expect from me until they change their heavy handed approach to my clients.

I have also advised my clients and designer colleagues to do the same. Maybe if we all pulled together then Getty might just become a little more reasonable - but I doubt it.

I urge all of you to reconsider your suppliers as well.

[preVenger]

As I was researching this subject, due to receiving my "extortion letter" from Getty, I found this thread. I have a couple of points to note regarding this subject.

1) The website in question was built 11 years ago and uses ONE Getty image. Most of the letters are sent to companies who are using at least 10 Getty images. I guess they are running out of people to sue. Unless they count the repeated instance of the same image (header on each page) I honestly have no idea where the image in question came from.

2) I am from the US, and, it strikes me as unconstitutional that I receive a letter that basically states, "You are guilty of theft. Provide proof that you are innocent or pay us." Excuse me??? But, in a court of law, you are innocent until proven guilty. This letter is extortion.

3) I dealt with a letter like this many years ago. Hired an attorney to fight it. Tried repeatedly to communicate with Getty via my attorney. They are a brick wall. ZERO response from their end. All they want is a check sent. I finally dropped the subject and never heard from them again.

4) On the legal side, though, I gotta admit that I NEVER build a website without buying the images. EVER. Whereas, in the past (late 90's and early 2000's) I would borrow an occasional image here and there. So, now I do print out copies of the license and give them to my customers in case they receive an extortion letter because some type of bot puts their website under a microscope and recognizes something that could have potentially belonged to them. Ah, live and learn.

I would love to hear from someone who received a letter, ignored the subject altogether, and was sued or a collection agency was given the bill? Also, you are not technically being sued unless you are handed papers. Receiving a letter in the mail does not constitute a legal serving of papers.

[F451]

Actually I had a demand and fought it off with a few letters and no legal fees! The first thing to say is that it isn't a scam, a scurrilous bit of profiteering yes but not a scam. To make matters worse the copyright lawyers will tell you it is an infringement, Getty has a cast-iron case in law and the best and only sensible course is to pay up (with a hefty bill for that bit of wisdom). Well here's what happened to me.

I received the letter in Jan 2010, supposedly posted a month earlier in 2009, containing the usual nonsense and a bill for £1200 discounted to £900 if I paid up within a month - remember the letter arrived a month after it was dated.

In one respect it was a fair cop, there was a single lo-res image on a secondary page that my web-guy had found on a photo-sharing site. Like most of you, I couldn't believe that Getty could charge such a grossly disproportionate figure in supposed damages (to you and I that is loss of earnings). At first I claimed innocent infringement but this was rejected. I then did some reading and found another useful section of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; the salient bit being Section 98 1C:

"the amount recoverable against him by way of damages or on an account of profits shall not exceed double the amount which would have been payable by him as licensee if such a licence on those terms had been granted before the earliest infringement"

There were two important aspects of Getty's claim:

1. they were incorrectly claiming I had a high res banner
2. they gave an unspecified period of publication.

I wrote the Getty pointing out the image in use a web res image and offered £70 in settlement - twice the license fee for a three month period of publication. Interestingly they wrote back and stated that until I "admitted the full period of publication" the initial demand stood.

On three separate occasions I asked Getty for full disclosure of their claims, to say when they became aware of the alleged infringement and proof of the image resolution that they were claiming - available in the HTML of a page rather than the screen shot that they had presented as evidence. I finally got a letter back, with no mention of the resolution, but that they "became aware" of the potential infringement in July 2009 but "believed" the image to be in use for much longer!

I wrote back pointing out that if they were aware of a potential infringement in July but had waited until December to notify us then they had acted in such a way as to deliberately inflate any subsequent claim for damages. We withdrew our settlement offer and said we would rely on section 98-1C in settling the claim at Court but would be asking the Court to consider Getty's action in inflating a grossly disproportionate claim for damages.

It has been nine months since we last heard from them?

Now, I am no lawyer and I do not offer this as legal advice but if you are caught up in this ask two questions of Getty - what is the resolution of the image in question and when did they become aware of the potential infringement. Use both facts to offer a fair & reasonable settlement of twice the license fee that would have been due.
Good Luck

[Class Quick]

Thing is a lot of photographers sell to multiple agencies. I know for a fact that Getty is one of the biggest and is also one of the worst for payment to photographers.

You will be fine if the old company have a license purchased elsewhere for the image. £1.6k is probably just tens time what they charge for the image.

[sweet candy]

Class Quick, on 22 February 2011 - 12:01 AM, said:

Thing is a lot of photographers sell to multiple agencies. I know for a fact that Getty is one of the biggest and is also one of the worst for payment to photographers.

You will be fine if the old company have a license purchased elsewhere for the image. £1.6k is probably just tens time what they charge for the image.

Finally,you pay them? as I also got the letter from gettyimage,them ask for claim USD 850,what should we do now,they said this is the last chance.if we dont pay,they will take legal atction.

[sweet candy]

mike_1337, on 14 March 2008 - 05:35 PM, said:

I work for a company as a general IT guy, I'm in charge of the website etc.

I inherited the website from another web design company who had designed the website before i started working for this company. I've developed the website but kept aspects of the old design like the images and content.

This morning we received a notice of copyright infringement form Getty Images demanding £1.6k if we could not prove we had the license. I contacted the web design company and luckily they said the image was downloaded elsewhere and not from getty images and that if getty want to discuss further they should contact them instead of us.

Can they really just demand money like that? Dont they have to ask us to remove the image first and charge us if we refuse?

And how did they know that the image belongs to them? How did they find the image? If what the other design company is saying is true, then I dont think they should go around issuing fines when the image could have been downloaded from another site.

Bit of a scary situation for a beginner!

Did you pay them finally?
as they also claim us USD 850 CAD.we dont know how to do next, can you give some suggetion?

Thanks.

[sweet candy]

Expat629, on 17 March 2008 - 04:15 PM, said:

Yes, they can... whether they are successful is another matter. But my point was, there is no official process to follow for civil dispute (unlike with the law) - if someone wants to sue you, they can. It doesn't matter what country you're in either.

I've been working with a company recently that was sued by a huge conglomerate for an absolute bullsh*t reason. Everyone knows it's bullying, including the media, but the fact remains that small companies don't usually have the money to fight these types of things and the big bully companies are counting on that.

Anyway, in that case their liability policy was a good one and did pay to fight the lawsuit. But it was a huge lesson for everyone involved that you don't need to do anything wrong in order to get sued.

Gettyimges asked for claim $850 CAD,but we download the image from other website, and this imge just similar to their image, not actual the same.


they said this is the last chance for us to pay it, otherwise,they will take legal action for this.

In this case, will you pay them?

or if not,how to do this?

[PhotoshopDesigner]

sweet candy, on 31 August 2011 - 06:53 AM, said:

Gettyimges asked for claim $850 CAD,but we download the image from other website, and this imge just similar to their image, not actual the same.


they said this is the last chance for us to pay it, otherwise,they will take legal action for this.

In this case, will you pay them?

or if not,how to do this?

I have heard from the author of bestreviewer that he gets a lot of emails from so called "lawyers" saying that he is doing something wrong and legal action will be taken, if he doesn't do X. He just removes the image and moves on. He says he has never replied, because these are just the people sending out threat emails anyway.

[David110]

PhotoshopDesigner, on 03 September 2011 - 08:28 AM, said:

I have heard from the author of bestreviewer that he gets a lot of emails from so called "lawyers" saying that he is doing something wrong and legal action will be taken, if he doesn't do X. He just removes the image and moves on. He says he has never replied, because these are just the people sending out threat emails anyway.

Plz plz help me... how can i get rid from this situation. i dont have money..

[SwiftNick]

 David110, on 23 September 2011 - 11:58 PM, said:

Plz plz help me... how can i get rid from this situation. i dont have money..

As DelBoy said to Rodney, who dares wins!

I had all the hassle from Getty from a period about 2 years ago until about 9 months ago. I repeatedly asked them to prove ownership (see above). They ignored my reasonable requests. Now, if somebody tried selling me Brooklyn Bridge, I'd first ask them to prove they owned it. If they didn't, I wouldn't buy it. Same as if you were buying a car. You'd ask the vendor for the ownership papers to prove ownership. As Getty could not / would not prove ownership I just refused to pay point blank. Enter Pinsent Masons solicitors who get heavy with the threats. By now I'm really p!553d with them so I tell them in English what my Italian friends express as 'vaffanculo!' (Google it!). I get another threatening letter saying they'll sue me unless I settle in 14 days. I tell them to get on with it. Nothing happens.

The truth is that Getty WILL NOT allow a case to go to court because they know they will not get anything like what they are demanding and once it gets out on the Internet that a court has told them 'vaffanculo' in legal terms, nobody will ever pay them again and their profitable little racket will be over. Pinsents go on about a guy who settled out of court and it cost him more money, i.e. he chickened out. They shout about it on their website like it as some victory. If he'd not chickened out theough, Getty would have.

So, the usual sequence of events is:
Getty threatens
Mugs pay, Getty gets a bit richer.
I say' vaffanculo!'
Pinsents threaten
I still say 'vaffanculo!'
Pinsents threaten again and give 14 days to pay
I STILL say 'vaffanculo!'

And sweet FA happens.

I recommend replying in the strongest terms you can legally get away with. It's fun and kinda satisfying when you've had these 455h0l35 on your case giving you grief. They deserve it! If you breached their terms accidentally / in good faith DO NOT roll over! DO NOT PAY! Most of their images are relatively worthless pictures of non-famous people in relatively boring situations. If we were talking about a picture of David Cameron giving Pippa Middleton one up the Gary Glitter then there'd be a reasonable case to say the picture was valuable, otherwise, as my NYC Italian friends say, fuggedaboutit!


Remember, as DelBoy said to Rodney, who dares wins. Just wait for them to blink first - they will!

[DigitalWorkshop]

Just don't try this with Disney!

[steve_L]

i had a meeting with our MP yesterday about the getty extortion letters - she was appalled that large companies using expensive lawyers bullying small businesses with extortionate demands for money - using copyright laws not for what they were originally intended - which is to protect the originator and not to be used to keep a company that is in administration from going under by menacing small businesses to pay large sums of money to them.
She wants everybody receiving these letters to contact their MP to make everyone aware that these laws are being abused.