Recieved a demand letter today.. What do you think of my response?

[lucia]

Yep. I saw my site crash repeatedly right around the time I write my second letter.

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/bezeqint-net-is-this-an-attack/
I now block java agents. I block besquint. I moderate Israel at Cloudflare.

[Moe Hacken]

They can't break into your house in the middle of the night with a swat team, to search your house for images, right?
So why can they do that to my server, my life & my business at any cost?

anakin, this is what I've been saying for some time.

I strongly believe PicScout's "evidence" should be invalid in a court of law unless they have a proper search warrant. I think their rude search without probable cause violates our Fourth Amendment rights, the text of which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[1]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

I believe this is particularly true when they ignore the robots.txt file and crawl directories they are asked not to crawl, and when they crawl under the guise of a falsified user-agent, which is always. This shows bad faith on their part.

There is also the issue of the damage they do to the web server administrator by hogging their bandwidth mercilessly and distorting the web server statistics by pretending to be a human visitor. When you have a low-traffic website, those "visits" can make a big difference in the statistics you may be tracking for SEO purposes, thus leading you to possibly make incorrect decisions about your SEO strategy.

[stinger]

Good point Moe.  I wonder if any of the legal eagles out there can comment on the notion of a class action suit against Getty or picscout for illegal search, theft of bandwidth, etc.  I am fairly certain they don't have search warrants for what their bots are doing.

[SoylentGreen]

There has been tons of prior discussion in this regard.
Search for "trespass to chattels", etc.

S.G.

[Moe Hacken]

Yes, S.G., let's bring that up again for discussion because the topic was discussed at length but not exactly resolved:

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/is-picscout-legal-cyber-trespass/

Oscar makes mention of how Corbis would have let a claim go that the photographer insisted on because they would rather not risk creating "bad law" for themselves.

If a precedent is set that makes PicScout evidence inadmissible without a proper search warrant, the gill netting game is over and PicScout will be sold as penny stock because they won't be of any more use to the trolls than a team of monkeys searching the web for infringements manually.

Of course a legal challenge of PicScout on constitutional grounds would require a heroic legal effort. It ain't going to happen by itself, nor is anyone "in charge" going to do it for the consumer. The initiative has to be taken by the victims or potential victims. A lot of consumer protection law has had to be hammered into place this way, and unfortunately there are numerous victims of tort abuse or industrial negligence before any sensible regulation happens.

That fact that PicScout is "legal" at this time is not carved in stone. I think it can be challenged, but then again, I went to art school so those who went to law school can educate me about it. I can handle the truth.

[SoylentGreen]

I'd participate in the discussion, except that I don't want to type in all the same stuff again.

S.G.

[Moe Hacken]

Your comments are useful in any case, S.G.

I'm looking through the old posts regarding the PicScout question to bring myself up to date. I'm fishing for new ideas on an old topic because that's a key element in the trolling game.

Sorry if it causes veteran fatigue for some of you, please bear with us uninitiated folks in the lower ranks.

[SoylentGreen]

Here's some discussions that I found interesting:

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/is-picscout-legal-cyber-trespass/
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/how-is-this-different-from-picscout/
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/thoughts-on-picscouts-ignoring-robots-txt/
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/picscout-dmca-question/
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/is-this-plausable/
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/being-sued-by-getty-for-images-on-non-live-test-website/
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/gettypicscout-the-worst-copyright-infringers-ever-created/

They might also be fodder for further news.

S.G.

[Moe Hacken]

Dude, you're an indexing machine! Thanks for the links, S.G.!

[Moe Hacken]

Here's an interesting approach ... a legal "no trespassing" notice specifically aimed at PicScout:

http://dcdirectactionnews.wordpress.com/legal-notice-to-getty-images-scanning-robot-picscout-is-not-authorized-to-access-this-site/

Forget robots.txt, how about HeyPicScoutGetYourFaceOuttaMyServer.txt ... I wonder what weight this would have in a court of law.

[stinger]

I wonder what Oscar's legal opinion on that approach is?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Everybody needs to remember 2 things here:
1. Picscout operates out of Israel, hence they don't play by US rules
2. Picscout scans for imges and would never "read" any disclaimer

Unless your hoping to get business from Israel, it's easiest to just block israel altogether at the server level, if you can't do this yourself, your web-host should be able to do it for you..Albeit you may have to get a dedicated IP.

[stinger]

I get the fact that picscout doesn't play by our rules, but I would think that if Getty came across infringement information illegally, that information would not be presentable as evidence in court?  Or am I just watching too many legal TV shows?

On the other hand, if Getty isn't going to sue, but just harass someone, their job begins when they come across the illegally obtained information.  I guess that is bhuddaPi's point.

[Couch_Potato]

Everybody needs to remember 2 things here:
1. Picscout operates out of Israel, hence they don't play by US rules
2. Picscout scans for imges and would never "read" any disclaimer

Unless your hoping to get business from Israel, it's easiest to just block israel altogether at the server level, if you can't do this yourself, your web-host should be able to do it for you..Albeit you may have to get a dedicated IP.

That's assuming Picscout doesn't operate through proxy servers as well.

[SoylentGreen]

My opinion is that Getty/Picscout would have to obey U.S. laws.
Otherwise, any information gained by Picscout would be useless in U.S. courts, regardless of what country the data was gleaned from.
Remember, if they're coming after you in the U.S., we are talking about U.S. laws, not Israeli laws.

The only action that would be illegal in regard to a bot like Picscout would be defeating passwords/ breaking into servers.
That would be "criminal".  I don't think that they're doing that.

Fighting Getty by using the argument that Picscout is operating illegally would be the most arduous, expensive legal battle you could imagine.
Because many millions of dollars in revenue would be at stake for Getty.  I doubt that anyone could pull it off.

But, like I said, it's been discussed before.  Getty's most easily defeated on legal standing.

S.G.