Messages

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Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: NCS called today

« on: December 02, 2008, 02:31:00 PM »

I received the first notice from Getty in February 07.  I ignored many letters and emails because I felt it was a scam from the start. Once NCS found me and started calling, I decided that I needed to dig a little deeper and eventually ended up here.  Now I am trying to gather as much information as possible about the matter and am taking some pride in trying to defend myself.  

It would be nice if all of the innocent infringement victims of Getty found this site and we could have a unified voice. Please direct any victims you encounter in other forums and blogs to this site.

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Getty Images Letter Forum / NCS called today

« on: December 02, 2008, 12:49:09 PM »

So I finally received another call from NCS.  Their last call was over a month ago and I was not armed with the information that this terrific site has provided (THANK YOU!!).  I was polite, and when asked about payment, I requested that they send me proof of registration. The guy tried to bluff through the fact that they had registration, but when I told him that I was currently looking at the Copyright Registration site (copyright.gov) and asked if he could direct me to the copyright registration he backed off and said that they did not need it.  I told them that I was willing to wait for a judgment from the courts and that they might want to hurry up because my image was removed almost 2 years ago and that the statute of limitations was running out (3 years).  His response was that there is no statute of limitations on copyright infringement. We agreed to disagree on this matter. He then told me that anything that I am reading on the internet is incorrect and that Getty's likely next action is to take all infringers to court simultaneously so that someone like Oscar will not be able to help everyone at once. I refused to give an inch and the called ended when he shouted "infringer" and hung up.  It felt like a small victory.

It is becoming so obvious that their mode of operation is to simply create mass fear by any means (blatant lying and false threat of lawsuits) and settle as many as possible. I assume that since this is not an official "debt" collection, that no rules apply to these guys.

I hope that I get put on some sort of "informed person" list and they leave me alone.  

Has anyone had any further contact with NCS after letting them know that you are an innocent infringer and that you are informed of your rights and of the ramifications involved with the lack of registration?

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Getty Images Letter Forum / I too received the letter and have a few questions

« on: October 23, 2008, 03:08:10 PM »

Greetings all and thank you for this site. I am in the US and  I received the letter about a year and a half ago and have been ignoring it ever since. I used a very small pic temporarily while I was building a website template for my own use.  I used it without knowledge of any copyright and took it off the website immediately upon notification.  The whole deal felt like a shakedown and I felt they had no legal right to demand $1,000.00 for mistakenly using a small image that I really had no gain from using. I have been doing a lot of research on this and I have read everything on this site, but I still have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a statute of limitations on this.  If so, when does the clock start ticking?

2. If Getty does not have the registered copyright on the image, why would they go to court? If I understand the situation properly, they are only eligible to recover actual damages (cost of image plus cost of finding it on my website) if they cannot provide the registration.  If they went to court and were only awarded a couple of hundred dollars, then their whole extortion scheme would be exposed.

So, what I am hoping is that they know that they cannot go to court and that at some point have to give up due to a statute of limitations.

Any input on this would be appreciated.

Dan G