Just saw this and felt the need to share as I find it amusing

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

 â€œI’m sorry, but no such image exists or has ever existed on this website.  You did an excellent job of mocking up a screenshot, though; we appreciate your need to locate customers, but you are in error....."


When I was approached by GI I promptly removed the images in question, and also quickly supplied GI with the license, which I have had for 12 years or so.. the response from them in regards to the license was something to the effect of " well anybody could have created this"...yeah ok, whatever.. so I just saw this on someones blog and wish I had seen this earlier..

::EDIT:: Who's to say GI aren't mocking up screenshots??? Look they are using my image on their site!! 

[MikeD]

I've got a business plan.

You buy a camera, learn SEO, take a ton of pictures of famous landmarks, toss them on your blog, Flickr and Picasa.  Register your photos, wait a few months, hire Photo Attorney or Brandon Sand and then send out the extortion letters.

I'd be fascinated to know how much money you could make.  The photos wouldn't even have to be edited, just take a ton of photos that people Google for and then bust them when they toss them up on their site.

Entrepreneurship 101.  You'd actually be better off taking generic photos, as people will Google terms like "Yankee Stadium" or "Empire State Building" and that's when SEO skills come into play.

Mike D "Photo Attorney, I'd like to hire you to take my cases on a contingency basis?"
PA "Ok, are you a professional photographer?"
Mike D "No, but I've learned a lot about copyright trolling from Ryan McGinnis and plan on using his business model to make some cold hard cash"
PA "Welcome aboard"

[SoylentGreen]

Good one, Buddhapi.  Heh.  I always knew that Getty was "taking the piss".
Really funny.

MikeD, I suspect that this is already happening.
Images have been seeded all over the place, even by so-called 'legit' photogs.
We'll hear of them pouncing on people pretty soon, I think.

Yeah, my 'avatar' is still awol.
I can't seem to find the controls to add an 'avatar' on the profile console.
Maybe I was just too 'good-looking'?

S.G.

[Bekka]

Come on S.G., truth up....I bet you got an extortion letter for your avatar!  How much did they want?  Under $100,000? LOL!

[SoylentGreen]

LOL.  No, no letters.
The picture's called "surprised guy".  It's a meme, or image macro.
It appears in many thousands of places on the Internet, so it's basically impossible to police it.
It's a screen cap from some TV show or movie.  So, I doubt that Getty or other trolls would own the rights.
But, yeah.  Everything's an 'infringement'

You can try an image search on Google to see how times it appears on the Web; it's quite popular.



I need to ask Mr Chan to look into my avatar issues.

S.G.

[MikeD]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001173/

I think that picture is of Aaron Eckhart, aka Harvey Dent!

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Being as that it took me less than 1 minute to create the above screen shot, could they really use something like this in a court of law to show proof of the infringement?? I would think not..so what else do they have to show proof? perhaps a screen shot from archive.org?? this could also easily be shot down.