Received a Getty Images letter yesterday...

[annoyed1]

OK, I received one of these stupid letters yesterday.  Not a "huge" amount of money, one image, but still, a lot more than I can spend, for sure.  Mine is requesting $780... seems like too little to go to court for to me.

In addition, the website that it was on is really not even needed any more, as I got out of that business over three years ago, and probably SHOULD have just shut it down, but didn't... I have now removed ALL files from the site, and it is completely bare now.  Not that that matters, really.

My argument (and sort of a question) is...  The image that was used, I think, may have come from a site of a company that I was an "authorized dealer" of their accounting software, back around 1998 to early 2000's, and I thought we were allowed to use their images.  But, frankly, I really have NO solid recollection of where it came from.  I had no idea that this specific image was copyrighted.  Not a good argument, but that long ago, the thought that I may be stealing an image didn't occur to me, sadly.  So could this be an argument?

The problem is that I cannot find any literature or information left over as to if that really WAS the case, as that company has been bought, and all their websites changed to the new company, etc, and that image is long gone from their sites, to my knowledge.

Has anyone gone back to Getty, and offered something in the order of 5 or 10% to resolve this, with success?  Seems to me that the particular image I had is not worth much more than that, frankly, and that business has not made any money for many years now.

To top it all off, all phone numbers for that business have long since been disconnected...

Thanks a lot for operating this site!

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

an offer won't get you much except for opening a line of communication..as for your argument, that won't get very far either. Even if the site did come from another company site, and they did give you permission ( written or otherwise) to use the image, that doesn't mean they had the right to grant you permission.. we se this happen all the time ..."we "thought" we could use it"..."we didn't know it was copyrighted.." fact of the matter is  that if you did not create it yourself, someone somewhere owns the rights to it. Get educated thru the forum, then make a decision how to proceed

[annoyed1]

Thanks buddhapi,  I have been reading quite a lot since yesterday when I got the letter, watched many videos, etc.  I'm writing the letter to them today, as recommended, requesting proof of copyright ownership & registration.  I will see what happens from there.  If push comes to shove, I do have a local friend who is a lawyer & might be able to help me.