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Author Topic: Getty Images Letter relating to Twylah Tweet storage  (Read 3151 times)

Benaron

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Getty Images Letter relating to Twylah Tweet storage
« on: March 18, 2013, 08:02:17 PM »
I've just received a Getty Images letter. At first, I thought it a complete joke as the images concerned are not on my website. They also got my email completely wrong in their letter - using the email for another company's MD, who I know and who just happens to be a competitor.

I was about to send off a "Mr Angry" type letter but logged onto their site to see if they recorded the URLs of the images. They did - and I'm amazed that they did send me the letter, but also a bit (tiny bit) worried as I do know they can get nasty. At the least they waste a lot of time so how do I get rid of them permanently.

The images concerned are held in news articles that I've tweeted. I'm sure that the news source concerned (e.g. The Economist) is using them legitimately. All I've done is tweet the URL of the article (not even the image). The catch is that I use a site called Twylah.com to curate my tweets. These are held on www.twylah.com/mytwitterid. These show my tweet PLUS the first few lines of the article and any pictures in a newspaper style page. That way people can view all my tweets together as a newsletter - with images held in the original source (and not on my site or Twylah's site). Catch 2 - is that I then redirect the twylah page to my website so it looks like this http://twitter.mywebsite.com. These then get categorised and stored. All that's really stored is the tweet. What you see is the image plus abstract.

So that's what Getty Images has found. I cannot remove the image and all I can do is stop curating tweets in Twylah (which I don't want to do) or delete the tweet (but it may happen again so I'd have to stop tweeting).

i know I shouldn't ignore the letter and have responded. Has this happened to anybody else?

Jerry Witt (mcfilms)

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Re: Getty Images Letter relating to Twylah Tweet storage
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2013, 09:10:17 PM »
First tagging this as #gettyflubs for future reference.

Second, if this is images collected by an aggregator (twylah) and not even displayed on your site, in my opinion you are free to do whatever you want. You could ignore the letter. Call the company up and launch into a vitriolic hail of indignity, or you could write a letter calmly telling them they got jack.

If you poke around on these threads you'll see Getty has tried to hustle many other people for images not on their site. Maybe you'll think this scheme is evil enough for you to do something about it. You could stop buying images from Getty and subsidiary iStockPhoto, you could follow Greg's lead and complain to the Washington state Attorney General, or you could share your experiences with other business people so people are aware of this particular scam.
Although I may be a super-genius, I am not a lawyer. So take my scribblings for what they are worth and get a real lawyer for real legal advice. But if you want media and design advice, please visit Motion City at http://motioncity.com.

lucia

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Re: Getty Images Letter relating to Twylah Tweet storage
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2013, 02:27:50 PM »
I received a letter demanding money for an image I hotlinked.  I sent one letter -- but they persisted. I then wrote this in the sencond letter:

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/recieved-a-demand-letter-today-what-do-you-think-of-my-response/msg9271/#msg9271

I got a 3rd letter-- which was mostly just a clerical error on their part.  They can get as "nasty" as they like. But if the image was not hosted on your server-- and in this case not even on Twilah's server, and you made no copy, the law is on your side, not theirs.

Bear in mind: Amazon v. Perfect 10 is a 9th district ruling not the supreme court. But really, Getty would have to take your case to the Supreme Court and I don't think they'd risk that.

 

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