Hi,
I am from Australia and I would like to share my story so other Australians and other victims from the US and the UK may also refer to it.
The image Getty got me for was included in a template that my hosting provider gave to its customers about 3 yrs ago. Then a couple of weeks ago, I got the letter from Getty asking for $1320. I took the image out of my site immediately. It was already the last day before the due date the payment was due. I did not have much time to research it. At first I thought it was one of those Nigerian Internet scams.
By the time, I realised that it wasn't one of those, I sourly paid the $1320 Australian Dollars just before the day finished just to avoid it growing bigger. I emailed Getty to tell them my payment details but I told them I was still looking into it.
My reaction :
What I do not like about Getty's action is that, they do not have the decency to say, "Hey that is our image and we’ll give you a few days to take it down". They assume that you are a crook right from the start. They do not consider that perhaps you have just as much desire to do business honestly.
Getty’s move is just pay us $1300 in 21 days or we’ll advance it to the next legal stage.
Just because they have the financial backing to argue it out in court over its victims, most of which are just part-timers or people who are just getting started in doing something for themselves, they bully everyone else. Just because they can, it does not mean that they should.
They say they are doing it for their photographers but
how do we know that it is not their photographers who have lost track of what agreements they have made with whom and when? The image in particular was from a template-making company who then had an agreement with the hosting company, who then gave them to their customers.
I hear about some recipients of Getty letters having hired web designers from India. I believe that these Indian web designers were not necessarily being intentionally dishonest. They might have rightfully licensed the templates from whom they thought were a legal source.
Anyway, advising them that I paid them, I told them about how I felt.:
I am still checking with my webhosting company who currently supplied me with the website template that included the photograph in question. They might be able to confirm at a later date that I had legal authority over the image.
I believe that you are conducting yourselves unethicaly. You automatically assume that people intentionally used your images maliciously. In my case, it came with a template that my webhosting service provided for its customers.
Demanding payment, threatening people with legal action, without first giving them the benefit of the doubt, even with, at least the opportunity to remove the image before robbing them off their money is abusing your power. It is blatant profiteering.
It is almost as if you have intentionally leaked out your images out there, making it easy for people to use them, including people who have no intention in breaking the law, only for you to send out your legal team, a couple of years down the track, to profit from it. Absolutely brilliant, calculating and cold. =================
In their letter, they asked that if I got the image from a 3rd party, I should give them the name and the contact person of that company/person.
The next day, I researched this issue a little more. Realising that the issue was not so clear cut, I called my bank to retract my payment.
I contacted my webhosting provider letting them know what has happened. They said they held licenses for the templates and the images that came with it from a company called GarageMoney.Com. They were happy for me to give their contact details to Getty. Getty asked me that they will not contact my webhosting provider. Rather, I should tell my webhosting provider to contact them. So, I did.
My webhosting provider contacted Getty and confirmed that I had the legal right to use the image because my hosting provider gave them to me.
Getty came back to me, and my webhosting provider, a few days later. They said the image was not licensed to GarageMoney.Com nor my webhosting provider. Getty is still after me. Getty suggested that I recoup the money from my webhosting provider since I am the victim here. Getty offered me a discount ($990) on their demand which will expire in a week to avoid further escalation. I find this such a bizarre state of affairs. I feel like schoolboy being bullied and my assailant tells me he is giving me a special offer of receiving 9 punches instead of 13 and I should accept it before it will escalate to more punches!
I am still wondering what I should do. If anybody has suggestions, please post it on this website or contact me at
[email protected].
I was thinking of creating a separate website similar to Matthew Chan's, but focussing on the Australian perspective, however, I do not know how many Australian victims are there who would participate. Besides, I believe Matthew and Oscar are doing a great job here and it might be better to keep all the information in one website so that it does not get all fragmented. I think it is best to keep them all concentrated. I encourage everybody to be active here in sharing knowledge and information because I do see this us a case of the big corporations taking advantage of their size to trample the rights of small entrepreneurs who have all the intentions of doing business ethically and correctly. We have to rely on each other to ensure that it does not happen.
I would like to thank Matthew Chan and Oscar Michelen for doing what they do. Know that your sacrifices are being noticed and appreciated by the many, like me, who visit this website.
Topic: Australian Victim (Read 15685 times)