Messages

136

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Alternative Source of Images to Getty Images: Shutterstock & Fotolia

« on: March 20, 2015, 10:37:58 AM »

Amen, Brother.

137

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Jonathan Klein Steps Down as Getty CEO

« on: March 15, 2015, 09:45:49 AM »

 This news may explain Timmy McCormack's behavior the last few years.

138

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received a Complaint from BWP Media USA

« on: March 13, 2015, 09:09:34 AM »

GA again?

What kinda law they practice down there?

139

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Trunk Archive Letter (Getty?)

« on: March 04, 2015, 10:45:10 PM »

Well said, Greg.

140

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: This is OUR Oscar Michelen at his finest!

« on: March 04, 2015, 10:42:15 PM »

Oscar, what Greg and Matthew say, goes double for me.  Thank you for all your help!

141

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Trunk Archive Letter (Getty?)

« on: March 04, 2015, 05:13:00 PM »

I believe that when you use those words together, in a sentence, you are using a grammatical form referred to as UNDERSTATEMENT.

142

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Trunk Archive Letter (Getty?)

« on: March 04, 2015, 02:56:38 PM »

Robert, I understand how the corporate structure works, but it is my belief that there is only one Copyright Compliance team working out of that address, probably for both companies.  They are kind of one in the same anyway.

We haven't seen a lot of Getty letters recently.  Perhaps it is my suspicious nature.  We have seen Getty's tactics change over time.  Now suddenly, multiple companies are sending letters from the same address where the Getty letters emanated from?

I could be wrong, but I believe this is a conscience strategy to minimize ELI's effectiveness and to minimize any damage to Getty's name from both a marketing perspective and a legal perspective.  You have to admit, the fact that they don't sign their letters is likely a behavior learned from Getty's experience with one Robert Krausankas.

143

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Trunk Archive Letter (Getty?)

« on: March 04, 2015, 01:42:37 PM »

So now, they are operating under different company names, out of the same address, with no signatures.  But, I'm pretty sure it's still all driven by Getty.

Personally, I would ignore any letter I got from a company that I have never heard of that is not signed by any individual.  Were I in your shoes, I would still look into what I could do to protect myself.

By using various company names, they are likely requiring you to get two different letters from Oscar.  Good for them, because it raises the cost of not complying with them.  But it also raises their cost of pursuing you.  They might have to file two suits.  I wonder how Oscar will pursue this.

Is this bad for them economically, because it would require them to file two lawsuits against you, or could they somehow combine them if they really have a case and want to start getting litigious?

Would they want to file the lawsuits under these new company names because they don't yet have the trolling reputation that a company like Getty or Picscout has?  Do they think this might make it easier to get a win passed a judge?

By using various company names, they are also spreading any complaints filed against them across lots of companies so that it does not look like one company is doing a lot of bad stuff.  This makes it more difficult to play the SEO card against them, because we are playing it against lots of entities with no real marketing presence.

Does using various company names also make it more difficult for victims to find their way to ELI?

These Getty guys aren't stupid.  They are proving that they are in it for the long haul.  And it looks, from your letters, like they are going back to asking for inordinately large sums of money again.

I think LE has diverted ELI's attention long enough.  This is going to require some re-strategizing.

144

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Trunk Archive Letter (Getty?)

« on: March 03, 2015, 04:51:56 PM »

I find it very interesting that nobody signed the letter.  Is that correct?  If so, I believe that is the result of Robert's campaign to publicly list trolls over the last 3 years.  They just don't like having to wear the troll badge.  Many resign, causing expense and consternation to the troll companies.

I also find it interesting that Getty's name does not appear on the letter, since it seems to eminate from their address.  Again, I think Getty is trying to improve their image by keeping their name out of things.

Robert's suggestions are very good.  Let me suggest that you spend as much time as possible getting educated, before you do anything.  Those that don't, tend to sometimes do more harm to their situation, than good (even though they mean well).

As long as you are taking down the images, be sure to have them removed on the wayback machine (internet archive) as well.  Having done so, might open up a few more lines of defense if this should ever come to a trial.  Most of the time, they don't sue, but you would behoove yourself to prepare as if you expect them to.

Good luck to you.  I hope my experiences over the last three years can be of help to you. 

145

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: What you can learn from my 3 year battle with Getty and McCormack IP Law

« on: February 28, 2015, 09:33:17 AM »

Thanks for the kind words zazen!

Although it may have felt like staring down the barrel for a short time, I came to realize that, although my firm was larger than many that Getty pursues, it was them, not me, that has the "deep pocket" problem.

I felt like they led us into this, and that if they chose to pursue my firm, they were going to be very publicly exposed no matter the outcome.

Luckily, I think that Getty too realizes this.  I expect that they allow McCormack to pursue infringements that old, but they stay on the fringes and make sure it doesn't go far enough to harm them.

146

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: What you can learn from my 3 year battle with Getty and McCormack IP Law

« on: February 18, 2015, 10:07:02 AM »

Thanks Jerry!

Maybe some sort of list of those who didn't get sued or who beat the SOL will relieve some of the stress from those who get a new troll letter.

147

Getty Images Letter Forum / What you can learn from my 3 year battle with Getty and McCormack IP Law

« on: February 17, 2015, 11:01:11 AM »

Background

My name is Joe Stangarone.  I am the president, and a founding member of an international software company.  I have been with this company since 1981.  As a software company, we are extremely aware of things like copyrights and licenses and the like.  We abide by all copyright laws to the best of our ability.

That’s why I was shocked to receive a letter dated February 13, 2012 from Ms. Lauren A. Kingston an attorney at McCormackLegal.com accusing us of copyright infringement.  This letter was the first communication of any kind regarding said copyright infringement from either McCormack IP Law or Getty Images.

A reasonable business person, like myself, might think that if there really were a problem here, that a human being from the company in question, (Getty Images) might contact us first, before resorting to attorneys.  The letter contained three enclosures:

1.   Instructions for Immediate Settlement
2.   Settlement and Release Agreement
3.   Proof of Images Copied and Displayed Without Permission.

Taken in their entirety, my first reaction was that this struck me as similar to the Nigerian Oil Minister scam that had been making the rounds for years.  But this was different.  This emanated from the United States.

I have never been one to trust attorneys who write Release Agreements that require confidentiality of both parties.  This thing smelled like a scam.  But they did go to the trouble of delivering this letter via FedEx, so I looked into it a little further.

When I got to the Proof of Images enclosure, I immediately knew where this had come from.  They included 54 images that we did use in our monthly customer newsletter from 2005 till 2007.  Those images were still on our website, in case anyone referenced an article in one of those newsletters.  The only way to get to those newsletters was to know the specific URL, which we never published.

The immediate settlement price tag was a quick $40,300 which included $1000 in legal fees, all payable to McCormack IP Law for the benefit of Getty.

There was no question in my mind that we had used the images.  In fact, I remembered giving my marketing director, at the time, the ok to do so.  I also remembered the day (2 years later) she came into my office and told me that either Getty had changed their policy, or they had seriously mis-led us and lots of other people into thinking the images in question were a loss leader for them and were free.

She asked, at that time, if she should remove all the images from our servers.  I made the wrong decision.  I told her that we should immediately cease using images from that source, but that I didn’t think we needed to remove the history of what we had done.  After all, it looked to us like Getty had changed their policy with respect to the images.  I knew that there were no direct links to the newsletters on our web site.  The only way anyone would ever see such an image was through a google search or knowing the exact URL.

Naïve me.  Never did I think that they would employ bots to scan our computers looking for those images 5 to 6 years later.  If I were not still here, they would likely have been paid off by my successor.  But I knew that we had been had.  And this was not going to be easy for them.  Thus began my three year battle with McCormack IP Law.

I am not going to take the time here to detail that three year battle.  Instead, I am going to summarize what I think I learned in those three years, in a way that might be helpful to anyone else caught in a digital image copyright trap.

Before relying too heavily on my observations, remember that this world is a changing.  Technology changes, laws change, google search results change, Getty or McCormack IP law can change what they choose to do and how they choose to do it at any time.  What I am detailing for you is the state of this market as seen through my eyes from mid-February of 2012 through mid-February of 2015.  Taken in that context, I hope that these observations will be of great benefit to you.

Things I learned in my 3 year runaround with Getty and McCormack

1.   Getty is a for profit business.  They are in it for themselves.  Though they may claim to be working on behalf of the artists they represent, make no mistake, they pursue Getty’s agenda, not the artist’s.

2.   Getty is not necessarily well managed.  This does not mean that upper management is in any way stupid, rather they have neglected a number of details along the way.  Those details are the reason individuals have a fighting chance against Getty’s copyright trolling practices.

3.   Getty’s Copyright Compliance group remind me of the salesmen in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross.  I expect, based on what I have seen, that they are paid next to nothing for their time, and mostly on commission (for results).  The poor grammar, misrepresentations of the law, and utter failure to address any issue other than how much money they will bring in, attests to the fact that they are not well managed – and focused only on their end game.  Note:  I have had no interaction or communication with this group.  What I know about Getty’s Copyright Compliance group was learned from monitoring their activities through a number of different web sites over the last three years.  I was getting myself ready in case McCormack IP Law ever referred anything back to Getty.  This never happened in my case.

4.   McCormack IP Law is where the elite survivors of the Copyright Compliance group might end up, particularly if they are willing to get a law degree.  In researching Ms. Lauren Kingston (the attorney who contacted me on Getty’s behalf), I learned that she used to work at Getty (maybe in the Copyright Compliance Group), before going to law school and ending up at McCormack IP Law.

5.   As a businessman, I consider the McCormack IP Law group to be the dregs of the legal industry.  Getty may treat them with the same disregard.  In over three years of following these guys, I have never seen McCormack IP Law represent Getty in court.  McCormack appears to be used as a collection agency.  They can get around collection agency laws because they are attorneys (allegedly representing their client (Getty Images)).  The legal threat that goes with that helps them collect in a certain percentage of cases.  I believe that Getty likely pays them more like a collection agency than like a law firm.

6.   It appears that McCormack IP Law uses the name of their firm to scare people into paying.  In many cases (not mine), the Copyright Compliance group says if you won’t pay by a certain date, we will escalate it to our attorneys.  Then a letter or two from McCormack IP Law makes it look like that escalation has taken place.  Many people likely cave in to this tactic.  My belief, is that the McCormack IP Law group is also paid on commissions based on cash collected.  They seem to look for low hanging fruit.  Let them know that you are not a pushover, and they reduce the time and effort put into collecting from you.  Show fear and a conscious and they will be on you like a pack of hyenas.

7.   When I got started talking to people about my case, many cautioned that I should negotiate the best settlement I could and pay up because a case involving 54 images was certainly economically worthy of going to court.  People thought it would be worth Getty’s while to spend the money on court filings and attorney’s fees because they stood to collect millions.  So why didn’t they sue?  I think because Getty is smart enough to know that they do NOT always have their ducks in a row.

8.   A good example is the ruling in the Getty v. Advernet case ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/75525341/Getty-Images-v-Advernet-Decision-Southern-District-of-NY ).  Here, you have a defendant who vacated the case, yet the judge would not hand Getty an over the top victory.  Instead, the judged dismissed the action, with prejudice.

9.   Getty doesn't register all of its images. 

10.   Getty registers many of its images improperly.  Some jurisdictions have ruled that collections of images don’t count as a way of registering just one.  Getty has used collections to avoid tedious and cumbersome paperwork.

11.   Getty's claims of "exclusivity" in its contracts with its contributors are not always true.  Although their click through agreement might state exclusivity, said exclusivity doesn’t really exist under the law if the photographer signed a similar agreement with another agency, because only one entity can legally have exclusivity over any digital image.  Some jurisdictions have even questioned the validity of the click through agreements, because you cannot have a valid legal agreement without a signature for both sides, and Getty never signed or clicked through on each image and each agreement.

12.   Getty knows that their strategy has evolved over the years with the growth of the internet and the changes that have gone about in their business.  Where their strategy has changed, they have covered their tracks by doing things like instructing the Wayback Machine (online internet archive) to remove certain of their pages from the archive prior to 2009.  Why would a company in the business of selling internet images ever want to remove their history?  Maybe they changed their strategy to no longer offer “loss leaders”?

13.   Although I do not always agree with his politics, it is clear to me that Oscar Michelen is an excellent attorney and an extremely nice human being.  He stands by what is right and I have seen him stand by his friends and those he never knew, to right wrongs committed by the legal system.  In many cases, he has done this pro bono and self funded his expenses.  These are not things he had to do.  These are things he did to make the world a better place for others.

14.   I would not hire Timothy McCormack or any attorney working for him to do any legal work on my behalf and I would strongly warn any friends or acquaintances away from them.

15.   I am not one to make negative comments about people, but based on the things that I have seen Timothy McCormack do in this industry over the last 3 years, I would stay far, far, away from him, as a person, as well.

16.   Getty and McCormack’s pursuit of copyright infringements has changed through time.  I believe that some of that change results from business not going their way.  Some of that change results from court decisions and changes in the digital image industry world-wide.  Much of that change also results from people and organizations, like ELI, standing up to them. 

17.   Oscar Michelen’s letter program has modified Getty’s approach.  Lately, Getty seems to have lowered their asking price for single infringements enough to  try and lure people away from Oscar Michelen’s letter program and into directly settling with Getty.

18.   Ian Cohen’s (Scraggy on ELI) victory in Israel has changed Getty’s tactics in Israel at the very least, and likely in many more countries.  Here is one link.  http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/class-action-suit-filed-against-getty-images-master-delegate-in-israel/?wap2  Feel free to search ELI for more on this battle.

19.   Matthew Chan’s PR and SEO campaigns to expose Getty and McCormack IP Law have not only caused pain to both those firms, but have changed the way they operate.  It’s easy to see.  Just Google McCormack IP Law.  The results do not paint a flattering picture of a law firm.

20.   Greg Troy’s campaigns to get the tactics of Getty and McCormack on the radar of lawmakers and legal overseers at all levels have not only changed how Getty and McCormack operate, but have slowed them down tremendously, because they can see what they have to lose by continuing their behavior.  http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/an-experiment-against-getty/  I apologize for the length of its thread, but if you are caught in the Getty-McCormack web, I think it is worth reading TWICE.

21.   Robert Krausankas’s campaign to expose those who work for these firms has cost both firms employees and the time, effort, and money it takes to train and re-hire positions.  http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/ongoing-list-of-copyright-trolling-firms-and-those-associated-with-them/  Robert is also a Search Engine Optimization wizard.  His efforts to discredit trolls he crosses paths with are legendary in ELI circles.

22.   Each and every person who has ever put up any kind of fight, or who has supported another in their fight, has certainly been noticed by Getty and McCormack.  That’s quite clear by their change in behavior over the last three years.

23.   Don’t react to anything you may get from the likes of Getty or McCormack IP Law emotionally.  This is what they want.  Don’t be driven by false deadlines they give you.  Take the time to distance yourself enough from their accusations to remove the emotion from your decision making.  Take the time to educate yourself on exactly what is happening before responding. 

There are lots of options.  Find the option that best suits your style and your situation.  Now, 3 years later, I am so glad that I did not take the advice of people advocating that I should settle because of the sheer size of their claim against me.  It was well meaning advice, but I could not, in good conscious, give in.

I do not know where this industry is going to go in the next three years.  I do know that for a while I thought there was so much activity that this would certainly get in front of lawmakers and the opportunity to extort monies from innocent infringers would be removed from the law.  Now I am not so sure.  Things seem to have slowed to a point where the impetus might not be there.  I do know that even though my Statute of Limitations is up, I was so riled by this business that I will keep my eye on what’s going on and lend my support to friends that I have made in this industry for years to come.

148

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Extortion letter/s from August Images

« on: January 30, 2015, 05:32:31 PM »

Although there are no guarantees, I suspect that Oscar's letter program will put this thing to bed for you once and for all, and for quite a bit less than they are asking.

I would think the Getty letter program applies because August Images looks and smells a lot like Getty.

Check with Oscar.

149

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Extortion letter/s from August Images

« on: January 29, 2015, 03:50:36 PM »

Well, you did cop to the use.  That is not so good.

I am wondering if your use could be considered "fair use".  After all, you are trying to demonstrate photoshopping techniques.  It would be difficult to show the extent of the work without the before photo.  I am not up enough on "fair use" laws to know how a court might look at this.  Perhaps a member of this board who is more up on fair use might choose to comment.

In any case, before I paid them anything, they would have to justify to me that they are the owners of this photo or that they have been given the exclusive right to represent this photo with all rights to it, from the photographer.  Your point that you were using the photo before they were even in business should justify the need for this kind of evidence.

I will say this.  Getty or August Images or whatever they are calling themselves today have cleaned up their correspondence considerably.  They have cut back on the legal threats and spell checked their documents before sending them out.  That's a big change from where they were 3 - 5 years ago.

150

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received a Complaint from BWP Media USA

« on: January 22, 2015, 10:28:04 AM »

Getting rid of the domain does not magically absolve you of guilt.

The best way to deal with your paranoia is, as Robert suggests, to get educated so that you know what might happen. Few people get sued over one image, but there are cases where this can happen.  Learn all you can so you can plot the best strategy to deal with this, for yourself.