Dear Readers:
Just wanted to give you some news from the frontlines on this ongoing Copyright Battle with Getty Images and their "collection agency" NCS.
Our letter campaign was begun about 7-8 weeks ago and we now have been retained by over 30 small businesses and not-for-profits. I can tell you that the number of "contacts" and "questions" are in the several hundred from all over the world - the UK, Australia (almost daily), The British Channel Islands, Belgium, Germany, Finland and almost every state in the United States. It has been very heartwarming for us to see how this site has helped give people some direction and courage that they are not facing this issue alone. Even those who have not retained my firm tell me they have been helped by the information we have presented. That is great and we will keep this up and keep everyone posted.
While Getty has not responded to the letters, NCS has. Their response frankly has been very professional, non-antagonistic and business-like. While they are willing to negotiate the amounts demanded, they would not accept my premise that Getty should only be entitled to actual damages of $49 per image. They have referred those cases back to Getty. We await to hear from the mothership.
What is interesting is that I have seen a visible change in the way Getty and NCS are handling these claims since we began. NCS used to send letters and notices stating that they were a collection agency attempting to collect a debt and threatening to put people "into collection" Now the letters state that it is a "settlement demand" and an "attempt to resolve a claim." Already, this language will make people more relaxed than the "into collection" language they used to employ. I have to believe this change came about after they read my post on the topic on this site and having seen this issue addressed in my letters to them. Who care why they changed ,its just great that they are taking a softer,more correct approach.
Getty too has changed its position since our little website got up and running. In response to an email sent by a reader of this post about copyright registration Chloe from Getty stated as follows:
[While copyright registration is a prerequisite to bringing an infringement action in court, we typically try to settle these matters without litigation and therefore do not make a practice of pre-registering our copyrights (although we do so in some instances). Copyright registration is also a prerequisite to seeking statutory damages in court, but we are simply seeking our actual damages and registration is not required to do this.]
Here Getty is making two huge admissions: (1) that they do not have a registered copyright for most of the images (in fact I think its closer to none) and (2) they are not seeking statutory damages!! That means no attorney's fees! Actual damages are all they can get. We would have a strong argument that $49 per image is their actual damages.
Finally, another reader of this site posted about a contact they had with a Getty employee in Chicago. According to the poster, this employee admitted that the $1,000 - $1,200 per image they are claiming is an arbitrary figure generated by a computer program and not a statement of their actual damages. As anyone who has listened to the recorded interview on this website knows, we predicted this was the case many months ago.
So it is clear that we are in our on small way impacting Getty's campaign. It is critical that we keep track of all these changes in strategy from Getty and NCS. It may soon be time for affirmative litigation against Getty and NCS for their practices.
Just wanted to give you some news from the frontlines on this ongoing Copyright Battle with Getty Images and their "collection agency" NCS.
Our letter campaign was begun about 7-8 weeks ago and we now have been retained by over 30 small businesses and not-for-profits. I can tell you that the number of "contacts" and "questions" are in the several hundred from all over the world - the UK, Australia (almost daily), The British Channel Islands, Belgium, Germany, Finland and almost every state in the United States. It has been very heartwarming for us to see how this site has helped give people some direction and courage that they are not facing this issue alone. Even those who have not retained my firm tell me they have been helped by the information we have presented. That is great and we will keep this up and keep everyone posted.
While Getty has not responded to the letters, NCS has. Their response frankly has been very professional, non-antagonistic and business-like. While they are willing to negotiate the amounts demanded, they would not accept my premise that Getty should only be entitled to actual damages of $49 per image. They have referred those cases back to Getty. We await to hear from the mothership.
What is interesting is that I have seen a visible change in the way Getty and NCS are handling these claims since we began. NCS used to send letters and notices stating that they were a collection agency attempting to collect a debt and threatening to put people "into collection" Now the letters state that it is a "settlement demand" and an "attempt to resolve a claim." Already, this language will make people more relaxed than the "into collection" language they used to employ. I have to believe this change came about after they read my post on the topic on this site and having seen this issue addressed in my letters to them. Who care why they changed ,its just great that they are taking a softer,more correct approach.
Getty too has changed its position since our little website got up and running. In response to an email sent by a reader of this post about copyright registration Chloe from Getty stated as follows:
[While copyright registration is a prerequisite to bringing an infringement action in court, we typically try to settle these matters without litigation and therefore do not make a practice of pre-registering our copyrights (although we do so in some instances). Copyright registration is also a prerequisite to seeking statutory damages in court, but we are simply seeking our actual damages and registration is not required to do this.]
Here Getty is making two huge admissions: (1) that they do not have a registered copyright for most of the images (in fact I think its closer to none) and (2) they are not seeking statutory damages!! That means no attorney's fees! Actual damages are all they can get. We would have a strong argument that $49 per image is their actual damages.
Finally, another reader of this site posted about a contact they had with a Getty employee in Chicago. According to the poster, this employee admitted that the $1,000 - $1,200 per image they are claiming is an arbitrary figure generated by a computer program and not a statement of their actual damages. As anyone who has listened to the recorded interview on this website knows, we predicted this was the case many months ago.
So it is clear that we are in our on small way impacting Getty's campaign. It is critical that we keep track of all these changes in strategy from Getty and NCS. It may soon be time for affirmative litigation against Getty and NCS for their practices.