Hi Everyone!
I probably should have joined and posted in here before sending an email asking for advice... But I'm still interested in paying for some legal consultation (but I'm Canadian, eh... Don't know if an American lawyer can help us out up here ).
I'm at my desk today at work when I check my email and see a letter from Masterfile asking me for $2,100/pic at 4 pics = $8,400 PLUS HST (13%) ===== +$9,000... for my website that I use for my pastime (but it does generate a very minimal income).
Here is what happened:
I'm sure this is the common reason why there's copyright infringement... we contracted out a complete redesign of our website to a design team in india (have all the email correspondence) Which went live in mid-November, 2010... and sure enough, it looks like the design team used the 4 pictures they (Masterfile) referred to in their email to me.
At first I thought the email from Masterfile was a scam (still think it's ridiculous) as I thought the proof they sent was 'doctored' as I had no recollection of my website ever looking like the website pages they sent to me in the email.
side note: our website has a main website (mainwebsite(dot)com) and three 'demo sites' we use as examples (mydemowebsites(dot)com).
After digging further through my server, I remembered the company that redesigned our site also did a redesign of our three 'demo sites'. Sure enough... that's where the problem was...
When we had our website redesigned... we sent the new design to our website coder to clean up the website coding... He then uploaded the site to our server. We decided before we went "live" with the redesigned site that we didn't want to use the new 3 'demo sites' that were created for us as they were too difficult to re-code for our clients. So We decided to use our old 3 'demo sites'.
I would have been sick to my stomach if someone found those 'never used' demo sites and asked us to create sites that matched them as I wouldn't know how to do it...
As it turns out.... Masterfile is referring to the 3 'demo sites' the design team did for us that we never used...
It ends up that the 'never used' demo sites were on our server as "never-used-demo1.html, never-used-demo2.html, never-used-demo3.html". I was still confused so I went through every page of our website (as there are links to our demo sites on almost every page).... I then noticed that on 2 pages that the links weren't updated (there were old links to the never used 3 'demo sites').
I still can't believe Masterfile could find these 'never used' demo sites as they have never been marketed, indexed in Google, or seen by anyone except the owners of our website (so I thought!).
After the site went live last November, we had problems with a few of our pages and had our coder rectify the issues as we were getting a lot of spam through our contact forms... My guess is that he must have accidentally used some of the old files with the old links... and that's why they were there earlier today.
I have removed those links but am at a loss... I know that there is no excuse for copyright infringement, but I think over $9,000 is 'out to lunch'. Also, I did my due diligence when contracting workers to ensure the design was unique and original with no copies from the internet.
Here's some correspondence I still have access to with the design team...
1. a copy of the posting I created when looking for the redesign:
"**EXPERIENCED WEB DESIGNERS ONLY** If you have only a few template examples, you won't be given any consideration.
**CUSTOM WEBSITE** Templates are not acceptable
I am looking for a complete redesign of our website including new layout, logos, colors, new pages, new content etc.
Our current site is 13 pages and our new one will be 16-18 pages
We are just looking for a quote now and will be making a decision within the next 2 months.
Please put in a minimum bid, then send me a PMB where I will give you our website address and examples of the direction we are wanting to go.
***** The new site design MUST NOT compromise any of the SEO work we have had done so you must have a GREAT knowledge of web design along with SEO for this job ******
2. After I selected a candidate and started correspondence... I asked him:
a couple questions....
1. Will your redesign include redesign our logo?
2. We want all graphics to be completely unique and do not want any designs that are used on the web (icons, graphics etc)
He assured me they would redesign our logo and that we wouldn't have any graphics that were already on the web.
Any thoughts?
Jeff
I probably should have joined and posted in here before sending an email asking for advice... But I'm still interested in paying for some legal consultation (but I'm Canadian, eh... Don't know if an American lawyer can help us out up here ).
I'm at my desk today at work when I check my email and see a letter from Masterfile asking me for $2,100/pic at 4 pics = $8,400 PLUS HST (13%) ===== +$9,000... for my website that I use for my pastime (but it does generate a very minimal income).
Here is what happened:
I'm sure this is the common reason why there's copyright infringement... we contracted out a complete redesign of our website to a design team in india (have all the email correspondence) Which went live in mid-November, 2010... and sure enough, it looks like the design team used the 4 pictures they (Masterfile) referred to in their email to me.
At first I thought the email from Masterfile was a scam (still think it's ridiculous) as I thought the proof they sent was 'doctored' as I had no recollection of my website ever looking like the website pages they sent to me in the email.
side note: our website has a main website (mainwebsite(dot)com) and three 'demo sites' we use as examples (mydemowebsites(dot)com).
After digging further through my server, I remembered the company that redesigned our site also did a redesign of our three 'demo sites'. Sure enough... that's where the problem was...
When we had our website redesigned... we sent the new design to our website coder to clean up the website coding... He then uploaded the site to our server. We decided before we went "live" with the redesigned site that we didn't want to use the new 3 'demo sites' that were created for us as they were too difficult to re-code for our clients. So We decided to use our old 3 'demo sites'.
I would have been sick to my stomach if someone found those 'never used' demo sites and asked us to create sites that matched them as I wouldn't know how to do it...
As it turns out.... Masterfile is referring to the 3 'demo sites' the design team did for us that we never used...
It ends up that the 'never used' demo sites were on our server as "never-used-demo1.html, never-used-demo2.html, never-used-demo3.html". I was still confused so I went through every page of our website (as there are links to our demo sites on almost every page).... I then noticed that on 2 pages that the links weren't updated (there were old links to the never used 3 'demo sites').
I still can't believe Masterfile could find these 'never used' demo sites as they have never been marketed, indexed in Google, or seen by anyone except the owners of our website (so I thought!).
After the site went live last November, we had problems with a few of our pages and had our coder rectify the issues as we were getting a lot of spam through our contact forms... My guess is that he must have accidentally used some of the old files with the old links... and that's why they were there earlier today.
I have removed those links but am at a loss... I know that there is no excuse for copyright infringement, but I think over $9,000 is 'out to lunch'. Also, I did my due diligence when contracting workers to ensure the design was unique and original with no copies from the internet.
Here's some correspondence I still have access to with the design team...
1. a copy of the posting I created when looking for the redesign:
"**EXPERIENCED WEB DESIGNERS ONLY** If you have only a few template examples, you won't be given any consideration.
**CUSTOM WEBSITE** Templates are not acceptable
I am looking for a complete redesign of our website including new layout, logos, colors, new pages, new content etc.
Our current site is 13 pages and our new one will be 16-18 pages
We are just looking for a quote now and will be making a decision within the next 2 months.
Please put in a minimum bid, then send me a PMB where I will give you our website address and examples of the direction we are wanting to go.
***** The new site design MUST NOT compromise any of the SEO work we have had done so you must have a GREAT knowledge of web design along with SEO for this job ******
2. After I selected a candidate and started correspondence... I asked him:
a couple questions....
1. Will your redesign include redesign our logo?
2. We want all graphics to be completely unique and do not want any designs that are used on the web (icons, graphics etc)
He assured me they would redesign our logo and that we wouldn't have any graphics that were already on the web.
Any thoughts?
Jeff