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UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Not Getty but similar practice - Fined for extortion letter business

« on: October 01, 2013, 06:24:46 AM »

Similar practice like Getty

Andrew Crossley, the controversial solicitor who sent thousands of letters to alleged illegal file-sharers, has been suspended from the profession for two years.

At a disciplinary tribunal he was also ordered to pay costs of £76,326.55.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16616803

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UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Take the rap.

« on: September 06, 2013, 07:05:49 AM »

Hi

I am a webdesigner and have been creating websites since 2002. All websites if I supplied the images were initially via sxc.hu or a disc called 30,000 photos  .After about 2006 all images have only been bought from fotolia. ( My fotolia account looks like a image gallery in itself with hundreds that I have purchased over the years  )

I have one client who has had the getty letter for one postage sized stamp image on an internal page of a brochure type business website. (in the design of the website)

I did use the way back machine to try and find the said image on sxc.hu but could not seem to trace it. I did notice so many good images have gone from sxc.hu though - lime light, her eye, freedom, roadside assistance, speed on the road, green on white appeared on hundreds if not thousands  of websites yet have all gone from sxc.hu. Did getty images remove all the good images when they purchased sxc.hu?

The image was also not on 30,000 photos by creativity which was my other source pre 2006

I have  used tineye and google search by image and the image in question that getty images are hounding my client for appears on over 800 other websites.

I have through these (tineye / google image search) managed to find two source that are offering the said image for free. ( one in private use and one in commercial use)
This is just a stock type image yet is in getty images expensive image range. Why would anyone want to pay say £800 for a stock image for a set period on a website when you can get better images for less than £1 at fotolia?(using there calculator for web use). Ok you might get an exclusive image that a paper buys from getty for front page and then I can see why if it was put on a website it would be very bad for Getty and damages would be in order but the majority of these cases are really outdated images that are available as I said for less than £1 elsewhere.

My client has read up on it and even said to me that this atradius company is bogus as in they do not have a consumer credit licence (?!?!?) and that he was not going to pay anything or return any letters to either getty images or atradius.

As requested by the client I have removed the image from the website.
I have removed the website from the wayback machine by using robots txt file

I thought ok i better check my other clients websites so I spent a day going through them and to shock horror found a number with multiple uses of getty images (one had over ten getty images  )- these are content managed websites so the client can add the images themselves. I have removed all these images and told the clients why. This just shows peoples ignorance of copyright and the lack of education and companies like google / getty need to make it more obvious that it is breaking the law. However Getty way of finding the infringed image - wait a while then say hay you now owe me £800 for that image is just crazy. ( It also shows how big this problem and how many people must be falling into this trap)

Anyway im rambling a bit but my question is I want to take the heat off my client as they are hounding them by getty and now atradius.

I have no intention of paying them unless they can prove that in 2004 they had full copyright and that the image was not available free elsewhere. I guess they will want to hound the end client as he is more likely to pay and in return I would have to pay him. At present my client says he is not paying but I guess this could easily change if they get to him 

I would like to say look leave my client alone and come after me - hound me not them.

How would I go about this?