Letter Received But No Such Image

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

If you are not responding the letters seem to come on a 2 to 3 months interval. If you do respond a reply will usually come as soon as your letter is read or about two weeks after you mail it.

If it were me I would send them one letter letting them know that there is no such image on your site and that Pic-Scout picked up an image that was hotlinked, cite the perfect 10 v. Google case that ruled linking is not infringement and let them know you consider the case closed and will no longer respond to any letters. You may also want to add if they choose to continue sending you letters you will file complaints with the Washington state Attorney General's office, the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission.

[Oscar Michelen]

If this happened to you then it must be happening to others. Yesterday I heard from someone who got a Getty letter but the Getty image while similar was NOT the image they had on their web page. They are reluctant to share it for fear of retaliation, but I am still trying to get them to send it to me - PicScout slipping?

[lucia]

Picscout does slip. I created some simple graphics and then used their image recognition tool to 'find matches' and got some pretty hilareous results. I would have blogged-- but I don't know whether 'fair use' would cover my screen shots of the copyrighted images used to show how hilarious the image recognition can be.  Hilareous can be: My image is nothing but a square with an X from corner to corner. It matched something a bird on a telephone wire. I figured the matching element was the telephone wire was one of the legs of the 'X' going from corner to corner. No human would ever have made this mistake. It also matched a bannana on some sort of grid background.

Some matches are, on the other hand, sort of awesome and explicable. Example: Photo's from the of Romney on a platform triggered matches with different photos of Romeny on the same platform. Many elements were shared but the photos were different.

Their tool has aspects of awesomeness, but a human does need to visit to see whether the images that supposedly matched do match.  If the human is either lazy, inattentive or something they could make a mistake too.

[SoylentGreen]

It seems a bit odd to me that Getty Images didn't provide the URL to the image in question.

At this point, it's a bit irrelevant in my opinion.
Getty images have never filed a lawsuit over a single image, so it's unlikely that anything would ever come of this.

S.G.

[Oscar Michelen]

Yes SG, you're right  this discussion is largely academic.

[netedk1]

I have had a similar issue; they pointed out an infringing image that was similar to one of their images (but not same image). I removed the image asap and sent them an email about it (along with the discrepancy in the infringing images). Didn't hear from they for 3 months. Then received another copy of same letter again. I ignored it. I then received a letter from a collection agency. I ignored that too. I finally received a letter from their hired attorney. Again no mention or reference to my email. Any idea what the next steps are?

Also, the infringing image was hosted by Microsoft and embedded in my site. How does this effect things?

[lucia]

Also, the infringing image was hosted by Microsoft and embedded in my site. How does this effect things?

Are you in the US?  The highest court ruling on the issue is the 9th circuit. It's Amazon v. Perfect 10.  Amazon won: They ruled embedding the image is not copying or displaying as defined in US copyright law.  So, it's ok to do and Amazon owed Perfect 10 $0.00. Nothing. Zip.  Perfect 10  lost. 

Perfect 10 did not appeal so we have no ruling form the Supreme Court. But if you are in California (and possibly a few other western states-- then you are in the 9th circuit and all courts will follow the 9th court ruling.  If you are in another state, Getty would have to <i>hope</I> that courts in those states would rule differently than the 9th circuit. And they'd have to have rocks in their heads to expect it because the 9th court was upholding the lower court ruling. 

I'm pretty sure that so far, no court in the US has ruled that embedding an image hosted elsewhere violates copyright.  Tell Getty to pound sand.

I then received a letter from a collection agency. I ignored that too. I finally received a letter from their hired attorney. 
Whoo hooo!! Both the collection agency and the escallation to attorney are way out of line -- especially if you embedded the image and also especially if they mis-identified the image.  If you embedded the image, this is actually a great opportunity.  You should write a complaint to the Attorney General on this one. Especially if you are in the 9th circuit jurisdiction.  Get your ducks in a row and we can get the information into this.

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

I have had a similar issue; they pointed out an infringing image that was similar to one of their images (but not same image). I removed the image asap and sent them an email about it (along with the discrepancy in the infringing images). Didn't hear from they for 3 months. Then received another copy of same letter again. I ignored it. I then received a letter from a collection agency. I ignored that too. I finally received a letter from their hired attorney. Again no mention or reference to my email. Any idea what the next steps are?

Also, the infringing image was hosted by Microsoft and embedded in my site. How does this effect things?

They are threatening legal action over an entirely different image that they potentially don't own? Why aren't you on the phone screaming at somebody?

Seriously, them wasting your time over an image that they don't represent AND wasn't even hosted on your site? For me it would be time to yell at someone, and then insist that they send a letter absolving me of responsibility for this particular image and issue an apology.

Please let us know where this goes. (Tagging as #gettyflubs)

[eznoh]

Got the 2nd letter dated exactly one month after the 1st. It referenced the first letter and said they were "willing to offer me one last chance to resolve the claim". It also said to contact them immediately if I believed I had received the letter in error. I sent them a letter to that effect.

[eznoh]

Just got another letter, "Fedex - Urgent". Turns out the image was on my site, sort of. It was an album cover, my website is devoted to promoting music, but had text added and color added so it's not the exact image, I'm wondering if that has any effect? The tone of the letter was amiable, not threatening in any way. I removed the image and wrote back.

Mike

[Oscar Michelen]

That nasty little PicScout bot can find even part of a Getty image. So if someone altered the image with the copyright holder's permission and then you used that altered version of the image, that still could count as infringement.  But the value of the infringement is what we disagree with on this site 99% of the time. They will likely not sue over a single image but you can also check out all the videos and forum posts about the issue to get better educated on the topic now that you have resolved the image issue.

[eznoh]

More on this ... turns out the image was on my server but not being displayed. A record company sent me a bunch of album covers about 15 years ago and I never got around to making up a thumbnails page.

Mike

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

If it were me and I was absolutely certain that this image had never been published on a page on my site, I would just ignore future letters.

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

I would agree with Jerry, if this is the case I would just ignore them.

[Oscar Michelen]

Ditto