Latest Masterfile Hijinks

[jimwitt]

One of my clients received a letter from Masterfile yesterday via FedEx demanding 9500.00 for 4 "offending", small images on their website.

From what I understand Masterfile is totally arbitrary on amounts they seek from unwitting victims. The site is a small, totally local website for a small tennis club. The images were roughly postage stamp sized and the website has only been active since March 24, 2010.

I haven't scanned this entire website with its wealth of information, but I wonder if anyone has covered the topic that in the 1990s Masterfile sent out tens of thousands of free sample CD-ROMs to graphic designers and ad agencies all over the world loaded with thousands of their images....NONE OF WHICH WERE WATERMARKED.

You know graphics and ad folks share images all the time....How far of a stretch is it to imagine Masterfile did this purposely as a way to make more revenue, knowing these non-watermarked images would find their way into the marketplace, then they could begin this extortion scheme? It's a lot better to get 3500.00 for a 500.00 image, yes?

Stranger things have happened.

[SoylentGreen]

Hey Friend,

I do recall those CDs.  I suspect that they were sent out to make it as easy as possible for people to comp their designs.  i.e., making it as easy as possible for folks to find what they wanted, and hopefully more images would be sold.  Sending out all those CDs with hundreds of *unwatermarked* images on them was probably a bad idea, for obvious reasons.

I recently posted some info about a legal case in Canada (2000/2001) which involved these CDs. In short, the defendant(s) employed images from such CD(s) in several web sites.  In that era, it seems that Masterfile only went to court after the defendants didn't comply with a cease and desist request. So, it could be said that it wasn't Masterfile's original intent to bait people into using images without paying, and "extort" later. Although, I strongly feel that unwatermarked images, legal threats and in some cases litigation are a big part of its newest business model, sadly.

The defendant(s) mentioned above won in court, because (in short); Masterfile didn't list any of the authors of the works along with the images.  Something to take note of, for sure.  See my post in this thread (dated July 01, 2010):

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/read.php?2,707

Good Luck,

S.

[Oscar Michelen]

I just reported on a similar case here on the forum in the State where Corbis had the same problem with the way they registered the images.