Hit with the Letter

[BadLuck]

Hello Forum,

Firstly, thank you for creating such a helpful community. I appreciate the time and effort that everyone puts forth here. In any case, a past client of mine just received the Getty Letter today through snail-mail (they claimed that they have attempted to contact her twice before-which isn't true). I felt awful about the entire situation and I told her to direct any of their information to me. After reading the forum, it doesn't seem like I can absorb the issue with GI from her. In any case, I deleted the image from the site and have also requested Archive.org to delete old caches.

GI is demanding around $900 for this one image. Which is pricey... especially since it's a small image. The way in which I obtained this image is unfortunately, bad luck for me. I generally use free stock image sites and believe that this was placed on one of those sources. I think I'm retiring from websites altogether after this... such a headache.

What I want to do is make this become a non-issue for my client. So I believe that these are my only options:
1. Pay in full (which is outrageous) - No one wants to do this
2. Write a letter into GI on behave of my client asking for them to lower the cost - It seems that some people are able to get them to lower the demand to around $600. Has anyone been able to get it down lower? If so, how should this be approached?
3. Pay Oscar to write a letter. However, could anyone explain the $195 letter to me? I understand that Oscar writes in the first letter and will even write a 2nd letter should GI respond to his initially letter. This letter should indicate to GI that any further contact should be done directly with Oscar. However, I don't get what happens after this point on Oscar's end. GI will most likely continue to mail him and demand things, won't this communication go on for longer than 2 letters? Also, once I pay Oscar his fee, is it likely that this will only prolong the fee and I will eventually have to pay GI the full amount? Also, if this only prolongs the lawsuit, would they be able to try to sue for more money? I'm not legally savvy, and believe me, I've been trying to absorb as much as I can in the last 4 hours. Placing Oscar as my middleman, isn't it the same as ignoring the issue if GI comes back with more demands?

I'm sorry for my questions, but what was done as a favor is now causing me a lot of pain. And I wish I was in a more financially sound place to just throw money at the problem and make it go away. Thank you for any comments and your time in reading this.


Also... If I were to hire Oscar for my client, should I try method 2 first? Call or Email (probably this route to have proof) to lower the amount to like $200-$250?

BTW - According to this letter its their 3rd attempt and our "due" date for response is by the end of this week.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

welcome the forum...I suggest you keep reading here and learning more. Unfortunately 4 hours is really not enough to absorb everything and make an educated decision. All of your questions have been answered here mulitlple times. I can tell you Getty will only want to deal with your client, as it is their site, so making it a non-issue for them will not be easy.

[BadLuck]

Thanks for the welcome and reply. I continued to read this forum and watched the videos since last night.

I'm still unsure of what to do, and I know it's only me that can make the final decision.

1. From what I've gather, I should contact Getty and tell them that the image was completely removed. And in that letter (it seems from what others have written into GI) I can also purpose a lower payment. $200 to $250. However, that will get me no where from the response that others have gotten.
2. I would then stop further communications and then ask Oscar for his help. Which I still have questions about...
My main concern is that the programs seems like it's delaying the inevitable payment to getty. Have people in this program had GI completely drop the issue? Does GI come back with a lower demand and if so, will it still add up to the original $900 they are asking for (Oscar's $200 fee + adjusted demand)? I only ask these questions because I can't pay that $900 fee that is being demanding and in my financial state, I don't see it happening in the future either.

But in the situation that my past client wants to ignore them all together... would we get a final demand letter and then be harassed buy the collections agency? Then the possibility of a law suit would could afterwards? Because even if I go with Oscar's route, the possibility of a lawsuit seems to still be there. My biggest thing is that I don't want to be looking over my shoulder for the next however many years for that GI lawsuit. It's stressing me out even though I understand the situation much better than I did yesterday morning. The worst thing about the lawsuit is that they can raise the cost even more and if I can't afford $900... logic would say I can't pay even more.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Some quick facts and opinions that might help..

1. Contacting them and making an offer, would show good faith IF it were to progress to a suit. Your client would need to do this, as they are the infringing party.

FACT: GI has NEVER filed suit over 1 image to date.
FACT: Ingnoring will not make it go away, they will send more letters an escalate it to NCS Recovery.
FACT: A simple letter to NCS Recovery refuting the "CLAIM" will stop them from contacting you. This is law.

At this point they may send it to Maccormack Law, whom will send more letters.

FACT: the statute of limitaions is 3 years from the date of the first letter, after that they can do nothing.

FACT: by retaining Oscar to draft the letter they can no longer contact the client..again this is the law.

Do you stress out over the fact that a piece of space junk could come crashing thru your house at any moment on a daily basis?? probably not, but it could happen. I've been involved in this well over 2 years now and have several clients facing the same issue ( no fault of mine I might add) and have lost maybe 3 seconds of sleep over it.. GI likes to use scare tactics in the hopes that the stress level becomes to high and folks pony up the money..thus allowing them to win the battle.

[BadLuck]

buddhapi - You are pretty much awesome in your timely response.

At this point I an not going to ignore the issue, as it will only cause my client stress.
I will draft some kind of letter for my client and let her send it in. I will try to settle the issue at $250. My guess is that GI will reject that offer. From this point, I would contact Oscar and see what happens over the next 3 years or so. This would just be a limbo period is which no one can really comment on. I've seen others ask and the answer is vague to this. GI will only contact Oscar and if they make an offer or sue, Oscar will inform me.

About Oscar's first letter, if he is to write the letter, should I even draft a letter for my client or let Oscar explain that we had taken the image down immediately (upon receiving the letter).

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

contact them with your offer, and state that the image was immediately removed, keep any and all correspondence you get from them....you might also want to include a requesrt for proof of registration of said image.

They won't provide it, but again if  and thats a big IF it goes to court, it could work in your favor...word on the street is that a majority of their images are not properly registered, thus eliminating the option of them going for more damages..

[BadLuck]

I did. At this point my client isn't willing to fight. My greatest fear is that she will come back in the future with another letter. Even though everything was removed, GI doesn't seem like it thoroughly looks through the site for any other "offending" images before it sends out a letter. This seems like it will follow me for as long as it wants to.  Has anyone gotten more than one letter per site?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

If you're client is unwilling to fight, then your client needs to pay them and be done with it. Explain to your client that you are willing to do xxxx, if that is not acceptable to them, tell them they are on their own. Chances are GI has crawled every image and you probably won't get another letter from them, but that doesn't mean another company won't do the same. Were any of the images obtained correctly? if not you might want to remove them all and have your client properly license new images..

[BadLuck]

I think the biggest issue is that the images came from her old partner's site and I can't account for some of the others (considering I use free image sources and that apparently bites a lot of people in the bum). But let's assume the worse situation and say an absurd amount were not her's (for this example I'll say 50). All were thumbnails and low res, would Oscar even take on such a situation?

Also, I think I messed up by offering to pay a relatively high amount. Not sure how this would affect my case if Oscar was to take me on.

[Oscar Michelen]

OK Couple of points - First of all great response all around BuddhaPi (as usual).  Secondly, I have not seen a situation where Getty writes a letter about one or two images on a site and then comes back after having found two more. Once PicScout scans the site it usually finds ALL the Getty images on the site and then issues a letter and you never get re-scanned (as long as you take them down) The main purpose of the letter is to stop them from contacting you and trying to get Getty to come up with a reasonable number to resolve the claim.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

"OK Couple of points - First of all great response all around BuddhaPi (as usual).  Secondly, I have not seen a situation where Getty writes a letter about one or two images on a site and then comes back after having found two more. Once PicScout scans the site it usually finds ALL the Getty images on the site and then issues a letter and you never get re-scanned (as long as you take them down) The main purpose of the letter is to stop them from contacting you and trying to get Getty to come up with a reasonable number to resolve the claim."


There is always the chance, that once picscout scans the site, and getty send the letters, that masterfile or corbis can come along later and send a letter, they all use picscout.. Bottom line as already stated confirm that EVERY image is legit!

[BadLuck]

I hired Oscar. Thank you to everyone on this forum and especially to Oscar for all of his time through emails/calls. Matt, you are also awesome for starting this community and being SO public about who you are. Buddhapi, well... you basically live here, reply to everything, and continue to fight the good fight- more power to you. Please don't ever stop what you're doing team. I do believe that we shall prevail in this matter (soon)... and I would love to see this board light up in celebration once we do. Seriously, I might just have a drink for that and I don't drink at all. 

I hope the best for all of us and my biggest wish is for these Stock Photo Companies to get slapped so hard that the extortion stops altogether. I don't like bullying and this is exactly that.