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Getty Images Letter Forum / Class Action - Here's The Cause of Action

« on: September 02, 2011, 04:10:34 PM »

Reason no one has taken up a class action yet is because it "appears" Image Copyright Extortionists (ICS) have not broken any laws. However, the technical community who deals with crawlers, bots and the indexing process knows exactly what the ICS are doing. They, for example, allow the search engine(s) bot(s) to crawl and index their images. However, they don't allow it to include the copyright or watermark properties. So the unsuspecting conduct an image search  on a search engine for example of a type of image like houses, babies, etc. The thumbnail images appear in the search engines for example. The unsuspecting don't see a copyright or watermark so they right click it and save the image thinking it is free and in the public domain. Then they upload and use it on their web site. Now, if you look at the thumbnail image properties, you will not see the word "ICS Company Name".."Copyright".."Watermark"... Why? Because it was deliberately omitted, or in other words blocked by the ICS. However, what you will see is a meta-based text ID string that is embedded in the image that "calls" back to an ICS when the ICS bot used to spider the web in search for its images runs across it. Then ICS compiles the list of sites and sends $1200 demand letters where if they just sold the image they generally receive between $10 and $300. ICS could include the copyright text and watermark when crawled by the search engines so those properties displayed, just like they include their meta-based text ID string used to pull a "gotcha"... The cause of action is Unfair & Deceptive Trade Practices for a start.....  BTW, we have found the attorneys who are very interested now that we have pointed this out to them......