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I too received the letter and have a few questions

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dang99:
Greetings all and thank you for this site. I am in the US and  I received the letter about a year and a half ago and have been ignoring it ever since. I used a very small pic temporarily while I was building a website template for my own use.  I used it without knowledge of any copyright and took it off the website immediately upon notification.  The whole deal felt like a shakedown and I felt they had no legal right to demand $1,000.00 for mistakenly using a small image that I really had no gain from using. I have been doing a lot of research on this and I have read everything on this site, but I still have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a statute of limitations on this.  If so, when does the clock start ticking?

2. If Getty does not have the registered copyright on the image, why would they go to court? If I understand the situation properly, they are only eligible to recover actual damages (cost of image plus cost of finding it on my website) if they cannot provide the registration.  If they went to court and were only awarded a couple of hundred dollars, then their whole extortion scheme would be exposed.

So, what I am hoping is that they know that they cannot go to court and that at some point have to give up due to a statute of limitations.

Any input on this would be appreciated.

Dan G

Matthew Chan:
Dan,

You ask good questions.  I do not know the Answer to Question 1.  On Question #2, that is the point we are trying to make.  People assume that Getty Images will sue.  According to Oscar Michelen, he has not found a single lawsuit filed by them on such a matter in all the years Getty Images has engaged in this campaign.  And even if they filed suit (which costs a bit of money and time involving attorneys), it does not mean the outcome will be what they want.

The day they win a lawsuit and it results in a $500 or less judgment, the power of their Letter campaign and threats will be severely reduced.  Also, statistically speaking, of the hundreds possibly thousands of letters going out, the odds are in your favor even if they filed suit, it won't be you.

Believe it or not, you are not the center of their universe.  People who unintentionally use 1 or 2 images have little to fear.  There are far bigger fish to fry.

Matthew

Oscar Michelen:
The answer to question one is generally three years from the date of the infringement or the date by which the copyright holder could have discovered the infringement.  The answer to question 2 is unknown.  Getty is claiming that they charge about $1200 for a two year license so if the image was up for two years then they would claim $1200 as their actual damages.  A good question would be whether Getty's inflated pricing would be the measure of actual damages or the market rate from other sites.

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