Messages

1

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Masterfile people responsible for your miseries

« on: July 28, 2011, 05:31:31 PM »

Saying that John L MacDougall may be offended is very funny given that John L MacDougall and his subordinates that he trained send 7000 extortion letters per year (according to their CEO). This is 21000 extortion attempts in the past 3 years alone! These letters are written to accuse others of criminal acts without looking into facts. Some bullied people pay thousands of dollars per image. How many people has he offended? How many stay-at-home-moms he stole sleep from? The words I chose were very decent considering this totally inhumane and unethical way of doing business.

This is neither nice nor professional. And the funniest thing is, that he and the Masterfile Corporation will insist that it is all legal. Nope, it is not legal. This is a major case of massive extortion. Masterfile knows that but hopes to get away with it because there has not been a specific law written against it. Our responsibility is to report this to the media and our governments in every possible way to criminalize their actions and bring them to justice.

One more thing, This is not personal. I don't care what the name is behind the "Poster Boy" of the "Demand/Extortion Letter". It happens to be John MacDougall, therefore he is being exposed. The company executives are even more guilty because they approve, encourage, and get filthy rich from it.

There are many nice people here that don't like to see others being called monsters etc.. Well.. John has just contacted you to pay up thousands of dollars for some image that you thought was ok to use. If you don't pay, he will continue blackmailing you into paying up under a threat that you will be sued for $150000. Don't panic! This of course is not what the reality is. You must read other posts to educate yourself. You tell me what you call such individual. Candy man? a professional, nice man? LOL?

That's right, he is about to nicely and professionally take your hard earned money via a legal loophole that their CEO, or his lawyer discovered a few years ago. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! DONT JUST SIT AND BE SCARED. MOST OF ALL DONT SEND THEM ANY MONEY! This only allows them to pay their employees to send you multiple letters and pay for their lawyers to sue you and make John and the Masterfile CEO rich.

Having them file a lawsuit to attack this website or its members will only encourage many here to come forward and speak up. The judge will look at the reasons behind the public outrage and will criminalize their business. It might actually be a good thing! The justice will eventually prevail. It always does, and those that abuse it always pay for it dearly.

Oscar having contact information to thousands of victims, is actually very well positioned to file a class lawsuit against all the copyright trolls, especially Masterfile. The attorney who will do that, will make Ta lot of money. It is only a matter of time. A tiny amendment to the copyright law will trigger a gold rush for defense attorneys suing them for all the money they extorted from the public and some more. Therefore you, the victim, must make the utmost effort to notify the media and your governments to propose changes to the current copyright laws. TAKE ACTION NOW! Do something good for the society. Make a difference!

Matthew and Oscar, Thank you for this website and thank you for not bending for those bullies.

In my native country Italy there are laws that prevent this type of abuse. In the United States it is only a matter of time.

Unless Masterfile provokes me, I will not post anymore because this no longer concerns me and I seem to cause a trouble for the creators of this forum. I hope that others will follow up and do something about Masterfile and their friends.

2

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Attorney Steven Weinberg contacts ELI on behalf of John MacDougall of Masterfile

« on: July 28, 2011, 05:25:58 PM »

Saying that John L MacDougall may be offended is very funny given that John L MacDougall and his subordinates that he trained send 7000 extortion letters per year (according to their CEO). This is 21000 extortion attempts in the past 3 years alone! These letters are written to accuse others of criminal acts without looking into facts. Some bullied people pay thousands of dollars per image. How many people has he offended? How many stay-at-home-moms he stole sleep from? The words I chose were very decent considering this totally inhumane and unethical way of doing business.

This is neither nice nor professional. And the funniest thing is, that he and the Masterfile Corporation will insist that it is all legal. Nope, it is not legal. This is a major case of massive extortion. Masterfile knows that but hopes to get away with it because there has not been a specific law written against it. Our responsibility is to report this to the media and our governments in every possible way to criminalize their actions and bring them to justice.

One more thing, This is not personal. I don't care what the name is behind the "Poster Boy" of the "Demand/Extortion Letter". It happens to be John MacDougall, therefore he is being exposed. The company executives are even more guilty because they approve, encourage, and get filthy rich from it.

There are many nice people here that don't like to see others being called monsters etc.. Well.. John has just contacted you to pay up thousands of dollars for some image that you thought was ok to use. If you don't pay, he will continue blackmailing you into paying up under a threat that you will be sued for $150000. Don't panic! This of course is not what the reality is. You must read other posts to educate yourself. You tell me what you call such individual. Candy man? a professional, nice man? LOL?

That's right, he is about to nicely and professionally take your hard earned money via a legal loophole that their CEO, or his lawyer discovered a few years ago. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! DONT JUST SIT AND BE SCARED. MOST OF ALL DONT SEND THEM ANY MONEY! This only allows them to pay their employees to send you multiple letters and pay for their lawyers to sue you and make John and the Masterfile CEO rich.

Having them file a lawsuit to attack this website or its members will only encourage many here to come forward and speak up. The judge will look at the reasons behind the public outrage and will criminalize their business. It might actually be a good thing! The justice will eventually prevail. It always does, and those that abuse it always pay for it dearly.

Oscar having contact information to thousands of victims, is actually very well positioned to file a class lawsuit against all the copyright trolls, especially Masterfile. The attorney who will do that, will make Ta lot of money. It is only a matter of time. A tiny amendment to the copyright law will trigger a gold rush for defense attorneys suing them for all the money they extorted from the public and some more. Therefore you, the victim, must make the utmost effort to notify the media and your governments to propose changes to the current copyright laws. TAKE ACTION NOW! Do something good for the society. Make a difference!

Matthew and Oscar, Thank you for this website and thank you for not bending for those bullies.

In my native country Italy there are laws that prevent this type of abuse. In the United States it is only a matter of time.

Unless Masterfile provokes me, I will not post anymore because this no longer concerns me. I hope that others will follow up and do something about Masterfile and their friends.

3

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Masterfile people responsible for your miseries

« on: July 27, 2011, 04:12:03 PM »

I have been reading all the posts and I don't like several things.

It looks like I am being set up as a scapegoat to blame for the entire discussion topic. I find it very unfair. The fun begun after "SoylentGreen" took a photograph from Linked-In of John MacDougall and wrote on it "I Will Be Rich As Somali Pirate". Another user "laverne" posted his laughs about it and said that he had also received a letter from John MacDougall, then Oscar came out and said that John is nice and professional. Well... I posted my disagreement with Oscar. My post included words such as "henchmen" and "cold blooded monster" when I referred to John and his helpers/lawyers. The recent atack from John MacDougall showed how "nice" John MacDougall and Masterfile is proving my point.

The image posted by SoylentGreen and the laughing post by another user were completely removed by the moderators of this website. My post was left there to put the entire blame on. I am not asking to remove it. I wished you had never deleted the content from it, because there was nothing bad in it.

I really do not understand what the fuss is about my post anyway. The words I used were not "Street Yard" words and I did not go overboard. The entire website is dedicated to the topic of extortion by Masterfile and their friends. I don't believe the words I used were offensive at all. They described their pathetic attempts of getting rich at the cost of others. Given my anonymity, I was very polite. I could have easily used derogatory vocabulary and said anyting I wanted. I didn't.

Suing me for defamation? I can do the same because I feel greatly offended, singled out and defamed by Masterfile's approach. Besides, if what I said is true, which it is, it is not a defamation. All one needs to do is to read victims testimonials in this forum. John MacDougall, being the Senior Compliance Officer, one of the main if not the main persons behind the "demand/extortion letter" is most likely the one responsible.

As far as taking a court order for my IP address?
I am not "behind 7 proxies" as one user said. I use several web proxies vertically one on top of another in countries on different continents. The difference is that I do not exist behind them because I use a public computer. I do it to protect my freedom of speech and my right to privacy. I do it because I know how predatory John MacDougal and Masterfile corporation is and I will not give them the satisfaction to use their weapons against me.

I recommend everyone here to do the same to protect themselves. Let them punch the air and send their letters to Santa Claus.

Nothing that I wrote in my posts was illegal nor defamatory. Please don't let John MacDougall or Masterfile label me with some garbage because I will not allow it. I will sue them myself for defaming me and limiting my freedom of speech. John MacDougall and Masterfile have defamed themselves through years of merciless extortion of thousands of dollars from the unaware public earning themselves millions of dollars. They go after stay-home-moms, mom-and-pops etc... common.. open your eyes!

Deleting words from my posts is not good, because others may think that there was something bad posted. There wasn't. The words were full of well deserved criticism. If John MacDougall and Masterfile had not been extorting money from the public for years, they would not have been criticized. If one does such things, one would be foolish not to expect very sharp criticism.

I belive the most touching was his picture posted with a funny text "I will be rich as Somali Pirate", but that wasn't me who posted it and I never laughed at it publicly either. Some people here have a very good sense of humor. They should not be blamed for it. Conan and Jay Leno do it every day.

Therefore, please don't give me the entire credit for that subject.

Another thing that I dislike is Masterfile coming here and reading what their victims post. Masterfile, Getty and others should be blocked from viewing this forum. This forum is to help their victims fight them. Masterfile may be using it to their advantage. They are reading every post and have reacted quickly when they saw something they didn't like. Mathew and Oscar, on behalf of all the victims that share their despair here posting their personally identifying details, please ban these predators from accessing this website, reading the posts and trying to limit our basic freedoms by calling us criminals.

When compared, Getty which is based in the USA is actually not as bad as Canadian based Masterfile. Getty does not attempt to extort thousands of dollars per image as Masterfile. Getty does not put liens on people houses to ruin their lives as Masterfile because of some stupid picture. Getty's business is diverisfied. Masterfile's actions are a clear predatory extortion. To see it all one needs to do is read the actual stories that their victims posted in this forum. One can compile a whole book on it. Some day it may make it to CNBC speciall programming called "Canadian Greed", Hey, that is a great idea. Lets all write to CNBC, 20/20, Dateline and ask them to cover it. This would put an end to this finally and the laws will be amended to protect the public from all these predators.

Yours,
Don't Give In

4

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Attorney Steven Weinberg contacts ELI on behalf of John MacDougall of Masterfile

« on: July 27, 2011, 04:11:22 PM »

I have been reading all the posts and I don't like several things.

It looks like I am being set up as a scapegoat to blame for the entire discussion topic. I find it very unfair. The fun begun after "SoylentGreen" took a photograph from Linked-In of John MacDougall and wrote on it "I Will Be Rich As Somali Pirate". Another user "laverne" posted his laughs about it and said that he had also received a letter from John MacDougall, then Oscar came out and said that John is nice and professional. Well... I posted my disagreement with Oscar. My post included words such as "henchmen" and "cold blooded monster" when I referred to John and his helpers/lawyers. The recent atack from John MacDougall showed how "nice" John MacDougall and Masterfile is proving my point.

The image posted by SoylentGreen and the laughing post by another user were completely removed by the moderators of this website. My post was left there to put the entire blame on. I am not asking to remove it. I wished you had never deleted the content from it, because there was nothing bad in it.

I really do not understand what the fuss is about my post anyway. The words I used were not "Street Yard" words and I did not go overboard. The entire website is dedicated to the topic of extortion by Masterfile and their friends. I don't believe the words I used were offensive at all. They described their pathetic attempts of getting rich at the cost of others. Given my anonymity, I was very polite. I could have easily used derogatory vocabulary and said anyting I wanted. I didn't.

Suing me for defamation? I can do the same because I feel greatly offended, singled out and defamed by Masterfile's approach. Besides, if what I said is true, which it is, it is not a defamation. All one needs to do is to read victims testimonials in this forum. John MacDougall, being the Senior Compliance Officer, one of the main if not the main persons behind the "demand/extortion letter" is most likely the one responsible.

As far as taking a court order for my IP address?
I am not "behind 7 proxies" as one user said. I use several web proxies vertically one on top of another in countries on different continents. The difference is that I do not exist behind them because I use a public computer. I do it to protect my freedom of speech and my right to privacy. I do it because I know how predatory John MacDougal and Masterfile corporation is and I will not give them the satisfaction to use their weapons against me.

I recommend everyone here to do the same to protect themselves. Let them punch the air and send their letters to Santa Claus.

Nothing that I wrote in my posts was illegal nor defamatory. Please don't let John MacDougall or Masterfile label me with some garbage because I will not allow it. I will sue them myself for defaming me and limiting my freedom of speech. John MacDougall and Masterfile have defamed themselves through years of merciless extortion of thousands of dollars from the unaware public earning themselves millions of dollars. They go after stay-home-moms, mom-and-pops etc... common.. open your eyes!

Deleting words from my posts is not good, because others may think that there was something bad posted. There wasn't. The words were full of well deserved criticism. If John MacDougall and Masterfile had not been extorting money from the public for years, they would not have been criticized. If one does such things, one would be foolish not to expect very sharp criticism.

I belive the most touching was his picture posted with a funny text "I will be rich as Somali Pirate", but that wasn't me who posted it and I never laughed at it publicly either. Some people here have a very good sense of humor. They should not be blamed for it. Conan and Jay Leno do it every day.

Therefore, please don't give me the entire credit for that subject.

Another thing that I dislike is Masterfile coming here and reading what their victims post. Masterfile, Getty and others should be blocked from viewing this forum. This forum is to help their victims fight them. Masterfile may be using it to their advantage. They are reading every post and have reacted quickly when they saw something they didn't like. Mathew and Oscar, on behalf of all the victims that share their despair here posting their personally identifying details, please ban these predators from accessing this website, reading the posts and trying to limit our basic freedoms by calling us criminals.

When compared, Getty which is based in the USA is actually not as bad as Canadian based Masterfile. Getty does not attempt to extort thousands of dollars per image as Masterfile. Getty does not put liens on people houses to ruin their lives as Masterfile because of some stupid picture. Getty's business is diverisfied. Masterfile's actions are a clear predatory extortion. To see it all one needs to do is read the actual stories that their victims posted in this forum. One can compile a whole book on it. Some day it may make it to CNBC speciall programming called "Canadian Greed", Hey, that is a great idea. Lets all write to CNBC, 20/20, Dateline and ask them to cover it. This would put an end to this finally and the laws will be amended to protect the public from all these predators.

Yours,
Don't Give In

5

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Masterfile people responsible for your miseries

« on: July 22, 2011, 03:12:53 PM »

Knowing how these people look like really helps. Little bit of humour helps everyone relieve this stressful experience. If Mr. MacDougall has a sense of humour, he will be ok with this as well.

6

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Masterfile people responsible for your miseries

« on: July 22, 2011, 03:04:37 PM »

John L. MacDougall from Masterfile is the man that trains and supervises *DELETED*. He is neither *DELETED*, his letters are far from it. They are *DELETED* . He just wants the most *DELETED*. *DELETED* for one or two pictures. He *DELETED* whether your infringement was innocent. This is how he earns his living.

7

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Masterfile - in need of urgent advice

« on: July 22, 2011, 04:45:29 AM »

Find out what the actual value is for this image. Not what Masterfile posts on their website. Is it $740 per year? Not likely! What do other websites charge for similar image? In previous cases the court established the market value of the image, because Masterfile fees were insane. Normally fair value of those images is around $20-$60 and there is no time limit. The cycle company that was sued paid just above $1100 for 4-5 images. That is why Oscar recommends offering $300 per image. This amount would include their internal costs of chasing you. The interesting thing is that all the images infringed are rights-managed. They maybe switching some royalty-free images into rights-managed as soon as they find an infringement to make the extortion worth a while.

It is a shame that Masterfile attacks hard working immigrants such as yourself who try to set up their own businesses.

There is enough information here in this website to form a good defense strategy, should they take you to court in the unlikely event. They pursue 135 infringements per week according to Masterfile CEO. The probability of them going after you is very small. If you don't pay, they will outsource your case to their "collection agency" that will call you to ask for money. When they do, you tell them to stop calling you, and that you dont have any agreement signed with Masterfile and don't own them any money. Their collection agency can't do anything to your credit record either, so there is nothing to worry about. This is what we did over 2 years ago and we have never heard of them again. We are in the USA as well.

They used to have more employees then. Now they have even less people to chase the infringers. Many probably become disgusted with what they did and quit or got laid off because they were either not bringing enough money, or their victims become smarter and are either refusing to pay, or never respond to those rude extortion letters.

There are many companies like that trying to get your money for patent infringements especially. Those that pay, regret when few years later the court invalidates their patents or limits their actions. This Copyright trolls will face similar fate when US Copyright Laws get amended. In Europe and many other countries laws protect you, if you remove the infringed content upon notice. You can't have some Canadian company - Masterfile extort 50K from some guy with a website (see one of the posts below by Mastrik). This is more of a crime than the infringement itself.

Demanding from you nearly $3000, or even $1500 for two images that would normally cost $30 each at regular market price from another website is criminal extortion!

Their goal is to make you mentally and emotionally exhausted with their lawsuit threats until you cave in and send them a check. What happens then, salesman John MacDougall gets a commission from your hard earned money. Each time you receive their letter, you read it, put it away as evidence of extortion and move on with your day to day business. Don't let it steal your sleep either. This is exactly what they want. It is psychologically driven tactic to take advantage of your weakness. Their deadlines are another sales tactic to make you pay. This is how they make their millions.

Don't give in! Don't pay them! If they don't take your $300 offer that is their loss and you will never pay them any money.

If they took you to court you would not need to pay more than $3000 anyway , which is what they want now. They may try to lower this to $800 later, but that does not mean that you should pay it either. This isn't any kind of a deal if the fair value of those images is just $20.  It is just money. It will not give you a criminal record, or ruin your credit history. It is nothing. The worrying and loss of sleep over this is only you doing it to yourself. Be strong. Only strong people can be successful in business. Learn to wear a thick skin and steel helmet. Don't let others walk on your head. Especially the Canadians:)