Whois Information

[gotletter]

What i am about to ask is in no way trying to encourage taking images.

When registering a website (or any time thereafter) one can make the who-is information non-public.  In an instance where someone has unknowingly used a copyright image on their site; would it having non-public who0is information slow down getty?

Or do they still have ways of finding out the owner?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

they could simply subpeona the registar and the "private whois" is useless...godaddy has been known to release private info with a simple email request..

[scraggy]

But would Getty bother?
I doubt it! It's time consuming.

If you don't want to be found, make sure you don't add your contact details on the website itself !

[gotletter]

Oh, I don't care about "being found".  I was just curious about the "making info on the whois private" - if that would prevent getty (or anyone else) from going after you (or at least make it less likely).  I didn't realize that the image I took was owned by getty, as I did purchase it from a template website.  just curious is all.

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

I think it WOULD slow them down. There are so many infringements out there with public whois info. Why would they waste time tracking down the owner? One could probably further complicate the process by paying for the domain with paypal linked to a PO box address and hosting the site in another country.

For me, I don't believe in all this tricky obfuscation. I think it makes more business sense to make it easy to be found and be careful in sourcing your images.

It would be interesting to survey letter recipients and find out if there are many (or any) with no contact information on the site and a private whois.

[kydan]

If there's one thing I've learned from the internet, it's that you can't hide anything.

Don't take the chance. 

[Oscar Michelen]

It would slow them down but it also may provide some evidence of a wilful intent to infringe.