I would also like to add that I am working on a sort of open letter, which I am going to publish in schools, universities, internet - wherever is possible. In this letter I am sharing my story - well, in general the story of everyone else who is here. This is just to attract public attention to this issue with Getty and Masterfile. There are still people who don't know about this forum, who get scared and pay or ignore. I decided to do this for a reason. Here is the extract from my email to Masterfile:
"After some intensive research I have found that the infringement cases for images are very common in the United States and there are thousands of people who got the letters of demand from the companies like your, including yours. Most of them ordered their websites from third parties or didn’t see any signs of copyrighted work either. It means, that you are aware of that internet users are tended to use the images found in internet using the most common search engines – Google, Yahoo, etc., you know that there is a high possibility of infringement. You say in your letter that you take the infringement as a serious matter (my note: in the next letter they stated that have loss and damages from infringement), so what do you do to prevent future infringement? I have found out, that you use the watermark when images are posted on your site only. Did you put copyright signs or watermarks on the pictures that could easily be found using search engines? How did you make it difficult to use your work without your permission? Did you enable right click function of “save the image as”? Why do not you send notices of copyright violations with the request to remove immediately first?"
Their answer was:
"Masterfile is in the business of licensing rights-managed images for commercial reproduction by clients around the world. We have been doing so for nearly 30 years. While we would prefer if end users licensed our material legally, unfortunately this is not always the case. As such, we must dedicate valuable resources which could be utilized elsewhere to locating infringing use of our intellectual property, and enforcing our copyright. We do this because the unauthorized use of our images negatively affects us and our artists." and "There is no requirement or obligation for a copyright-owner to assign a copyright symbol, watermark or any other type of identification to a copyright-protected work in order to protect their rights to their intellectual property. It is solely the responsibility of the end user, the party publishing the intellectual property, to ensure that they are not infringing on the rights of any party prior to publishing said material."
You can see that we didn't get responses on the questions asked. For me it sounds like "I don't want to do anything to protect my works, but I want to get full recover for the damages if this happens". It didn't prove that settlement letters are their buisenss model, but it leaves to to think this. They know that people will infringe, and it is good for them. So, then why to rise this issue in public? The less people know, the more money they will get. That's why I decided to publish the letter, to have people know about what the hell is going on. I am still working on it, and have it in a very raw draft so far. As soon as I am done, I will send it to Matt or post here as the beginning.
I also think to create a short poll that can be run on a facebook may be, or, again, in universitites, work places, etc to see in percentages how many average americans (not lawyers, artists - categories which deal with copyryghts on daily basis) know what constitutes copyright infringement (downloading movies, music, images, etc.). If there is a great percent of americans who don't know, then, again, it will show that there can be a lot of potential infringement - which is good for Getty, Masterfile and others (and considering the fact that they do not do anything to prevent their damages from infringement.....
)
If we cannot get necessary proves for class action lawsuit or barrirty, may be if we get all the smallest pieces all together, this will help?
I just need to know what you guys think of it, if it all worth of doing this.
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