Image Hosting Question

[billnash]

I just submitted a email to Mr. Oscar Michelen's law firm inquiring about the demand letter program, but I am curious about my unique situation.

I received permission from a large corporation to copy the content of a few of their web site pages on my personal web page pertaining to a topic I was educating my customers on.  Obviously some of the Getty images were on those pages and I had referenced them and displayed them on my site, but they were not hosted on my site.  I was told by Getty that it does not matter who was hosting them because they were displayed on my site.  Does anyone have any experience with this? 
They have now started with the demand letters from McCormack and the demand amount has increased by about $1,500 since it started.

They are claiming that if I do not respond that they will file litigation without notice.  I've never felt so bullied in my life.   

Thoughts?

[SoylentGreen]

Getty's lying to you.  If the images were not hosted on your server, then no infringement was made by you.

Here's quite an interesting tidbit from US law (as explained on Wikipedia):

Definition of "copy"
 
Several important rights exist under the United States copyright law only for “copies” of works — material objects in which the work is embodied.[13] Section 106(1) prohibits the reproduction only of copies of works, and section 106(3) prohibits the distribution only of copies of works.[14] Thus, as the Ninth Circuit held in Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., a link (even a deep link or inline link) to an image does not involve reproduction of a copy of the image by the person on whose web page the link appears.[15] An instruction to a browser to jump to an URL is not a reproduction or distribution of a copy of what is at the referenced URL.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States

This means that actual copying and distribution of content are infringements.  But, content that is only linked to on the Web is not considered an actual copy, nor is it a form of distribution.

Tell Getty to piss off.

S.G.

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

Do you have any of these exchanges in writing? (either email or print?) If they are claiming you infringed after you specifically told them that the images were not hosted on your site, then I believe they committed fraud.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Two very good points SG & MC. I could see maybe Getty's interns not realizing this, but I find it hard to believe that McCormack would take part, unless of coarse they are just taking the corporate BS at face value. I personally would draft something up referencing what SG quoted, and stating that you want something in writing from McCormack, that this matter is dropped or you will consider any and all legal options before you. i.e. fraud, harassment, etc..

On another note I think this is how alot of folks get caught up in this mess. They get permission from another site owner to use content / images, when in fact said site owner may not own the images, so they really have no right to grant this permission. However linking to is a different story..which naturally has me thinking again for way to better protect my clients..more on that after I digest some much needed caffiene!

[Matthew Chan]

Your case is not quite so clear cut no matter what Getty or their attorneys might say. You did ask permission to post the content which accidentally included Getty's. And if the photo wasn't even hosted by you, it blurs their position even more.

Nearly anyone you could possible interact with at this point have little or no meaningful authority. Their job is to sing the company song and make their arguments.  You have to be comfortable with your arguments and case.  Much of that will come from your getting educated in the finer points of all this.  Another part of it is whether you have the ability to make your case and then stand your ground.

They can send correspondence all day long. You simply need to do your part in responding with intelligence and conviction.  The people who go hiding in a hole have a weaker position because they are acting like they are guilty when they aren't. It only motivates them to dig deeper into their arsenal of threats vs. them realizing that you believe in your position and you are facing them head on.

Matthew

[lucia]

Your situation is no longer unique. Yesterday morning, I opened a Getty letter dated Nov. 24.  It also alleged copyright violation for an image I do not and have never hosted host but which appeared to in comments at my blog because the html in comments causes a users browser to fetch the image and display it.

I wasn't aware of Oscars program, googled and responded on my own.  Maybe that was unwise since some blog visitors seem to be willing to pony up money to pay an attorney, but I admit to having wanted to respond before I discovered one suggesting I pass the hat around for donations! 

My response includes the text from the Perfect 10 case.    As a courtesy, I also removed the html that causes the image to display and told them that.  As I didn't host, I don't think removing the html would be required by copyright law, but it seemed a prudent course. Also, it's not as if I have any need to display an image in a comment on an old blog post that no one could possibly be reading anymore!

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Greetings,

It's no harm in responding to them, as it could help down the road, if the image never resided on your servers and was being pulled from somewhere else, they have no case, it was good of you to point out the perfect 10 case, you could have gone a bit further and quoted from that decision..worst thing you are guilty of is using someones bandwidth. In the letter they sent did they provide you with a screen capture and a path to the image in question? The path is the key, if that indicates it is coming from a different doamin, they need to go pound salt...

[lucia]

They show a screenshot of the display but not the html. So, no their screenshot doesn't show the path to the image.   However, I know the path to the image because looking at the screenshot they sent me, I was able to find the comment and find the path.  I edited my comment to break the "img src=" part, but retained the information in the comment and wrote an "update" in the comment, dating that.   So, as the comment now stands, the information about the link remains in the comment.

I also wrote a brief -- fairly vague for me-- blog post and people at my blog are commenting.

I don't know if this was a wise way to do it, but it's the way I did it.  What it does mean is that I will have witnesses to the fact that I wrote the post, that they commented and so on. 

[lucia]

Oh-- To clarify:
The letter they wrote does not state the url of the page for which they supplied a screenshot.  In principle, the url could be read in the address bar of the image in the screencapture, but in practice no one's eyes are that good. I searched on plausible text that would accompany the image to find the comment.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

This is interesting...was the "comment" with the image on your blog which you own ( and own the domain) or was the comment posted on a forum of some sort?? I'm curious as to whether they have resorted to finding images on forums, then tracking down the poster..seems to me like it would be way to much work for them, considering they would have no standing whatsoever if the image in question was actually hosted someplace else. The whole with these companies is to use the scare tactic...send a nsaty threatening letter and x amount of people will freak and pay up... Feel free to link back to us here in your blog posts, maybe some of your commenters will come visit and help spread the word.

[lucia]

The html of this sort: <img src="http://not_my_domain.com/the_image_in_question.jpg"> was contained in a comment on my blog. My blog is hosted at "http://my_domain.com".  So, the comment appears on my blog hosted on a domain I own.  I'm not anonymous by any means, so I would be easy to identify. (I don't know if giving real addresses would violate terms about advertizing, so I'm avoiding giving my real domain name. Otherwise, I'd go ahead and do it!)

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

If they respond to you I would quickly tell them to suck ass, they have nothing, I would also re-quote the following:

Several important rights exist under the United States copyright law only for “copies” of works — material objects in which the work is embodied.[13] Section 106(1) prohibits the reproduction only of copies of works, and section 106(3) prohibits the distribution only of copies of works.[14] Thus, as the Ninth Circuit held in Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., a link (even a deep link or inline link) to an image does not involve reproduction of a copy of the image by the person on whose web page the link appears.[15] An instruction to a browser to jump to an URL is not a reproduction or distribution of a copy of what is at the referenced URL.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States