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?
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?