I am an attorney in Houston and just sent you a new client. You are providing a valuable service. I have been practicing in litigation for years, and I saw the demand letter, listened to my client's story (which is the same as everyone else's), googled "masterfile copyright infringement" and saw all the cases they file (probably 2 a day), and basically smelled a scam right away.
What a dirty practice! They want $2,000+ an image for what amounts to simple photos one could hardly appreciate as a "work of art" worthy of the demanded price.
Go get 'em! This whole practice stinks. I understand the reason for liability for "innocent" infringement. Really, I do. However, with photos all over the net (hardly worth much of anything), there is no way a person could reasonably research photos they are supplied in order to protect themselves. In one instance, the picture was of some grass. Unbelievable! $2,000 for a picture of grass!
Now, on masterfile's site, if you do a search for "grass," you will come up with hoards of pictures. That's just them. How can any person check all possible repositories for pictures of grass to see if the picture of grass (which one would never expect would be worthy of copyrighting in the first place) was copyrighted? It is literally impossible. This practice amounts to nothing more than trap-setting for the innocent.
Immediately, I had ideas of how lucrative this practice could be and began to question why I am an attorney who works for reasonable money, when I could just copyright a multitude of pictures I take with a digital camera and flood the net with them. With the ease of a "bot," all I have to do is sick an automated blood-hound to find my unwitting suckers, scare the hell out of them, and make easy money sending out letters en masse. The more pictures I post and copyright, the quicker my budding, new business will take off. I could start rolling in a few thousand a day before too long and leave this workaday, small law practice behind.
Truth is, however, my conscience will not allow me to do that.
Glad you guys are doing this. If I can be of help, feel free to e-mail me.
Topic: Sent you a new client (Read 4839 times)