Messages

2641

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Question regarding the letter process

« on: November 08, 2011, 08:04:23 AM »

If you notify the collection agency in writitng, by LAW they have to cease communications with you and send it back to Getty.It's a claim not a debt.

Read this post: http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/index.php/topic,2318.0.html

Contacting  getty a second time is completely up to you, some of us have some have not, I personally quickly chose to not deal with them after 1 conversation on the phone, as it was going nowhere.

2642

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: How they find you...

« on: November 08, 2011, 07:58:59 AM »

I think they rely heavily on whois info and hope that it's not private..if it is I would think if the address and such is not on the site, they would be forced to send DMCA takedown notice to the hosting provider. Any reputable host would not release this info unless a subpoena is sent. They could also use government sites that provide business information, tho that wouldn't be all that reliable unless it show a phone number which matched up with the site..Manta is another source they could look at to get business info, which may also have a link back to the site..

2643

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: List of Public Domain stock footage companies

« on: November 08, 2011, 07:48:56 AM »

I'll second the motion to sticky this post!

Another site worth looking at is http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

They offer 2 options for royalty free licenses . "This licence comes in two flavors: "Free" and "Purchased". The only difference between them is that if you use a free image you must publish the name of the image creator adjacent to where the image is used.  Purchased images do not have this requirement.

The purchase price seems to be much lower than the other stock companies, but the choices are also limitied.

I no longer use any stock image companies, I now create my own images or insist that my clients supply them, knowing the risks involved.

2644

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Question regarding the letter process

« on: November 07, 2011, 08:16:21 PM »

Maybe we could hire "Drizzle" to take care of this mundane task, she might be needing a job real soon!

Good to see you here SG, I was getting lonely.

2645

Righthaven Lawsuits Forum / Attorneys seek to examine Righthaven CEO about company finances

« on: November 07, 2011, 11:59:10 AM »

This should be interesting! " suspected fraudulent transfers of funds"

Lions, Tigers and bears OH MY!!!

http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/nov/07/attorneys-seek-examine-righthaven-ceo-about-compan/

2646

Righthaven Lawsuits Forum / Sixth judge rules against Righthaven

« on: November 07, 2011, 08:42:11 AM »

Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas struck out again in court Friday when a sixth judge ruled it lacked standing to file copyright infringement lawsuits.

Robert C. Jones, chief U.S. District Court judge for Nevada, dismissed Righthaven’s copyright infringement lawsuit against news aggregator NewsBlaze LLC of Folsom, Calif.

Righthaven is a company — not a law firm — that in March 2010 launched a litigation campaign unprecedented for the newspaper industry.

http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/nov/06/sixth-judge-rules-against-righthaven/

2647

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty sends out the lawyers?

« on: November 06, 2011, 07:37:41 AM »

The statute starts from the first letter, not from the when the infringement started..

2648

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty letter to me but image was apparently served in another party's ad unit

« on: November 05, 2011, 04:05:56 PM »

You should make sure to follow the steps required by the DMCA so that you can be protected from third party's posting copyrighted material on yoru site.  First thing to do is register a DMCA agent

I'm not quite clear on this whole DMCA thing but I don't think this would appy. My understanding is you would be covered by DMCA if you had users that registered and gave them the ability to post....much like this forum. When ads are served dynamically, the source serving the ads is remote and they do not have access to upload, it's all done thru a script which is grabbing the content from a different source. In my thinking  ( and I may be incoorect) this would be the same as linking to an image on another site, technically your not "copying" it , just linking to it, therefore they would have no grounds whatsoever..

So if I wanted to advertise on this site, I could create a bunch of banners ads upload them to my server, then supply Matt with a script to drop in the page, this script would pull the ads as needed for particular pages, but not of them would reside on his hosting server...

2649

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Hit with the Letter

« on: November 05, 2011, 01:55:12 PM »

"OK Couple of points - First of all great response all around BuddhaPi (as usual).  Secondly, I have not seen a situation where Getty writes a letter about one or two images on a site and then comes back after having found two more. Once PicScout scans the site it usually finds ALL the Getty images on the site and then issues a letter and you never get re-scanned (as long as you take them down) The main purpose of the letter is to stop them from contacting you and trying to get Getty to come up with a reasonable number to resolve the claim."


There is always the chance, that once picscout scans the site, and getty send the letters, that masterfile or corbis can come along later and send a letter, they all use picscout.. Bottom line as already stated confirm that EVERY image is legit!

2650

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty Image Demand For Image Removed Months Ago

« on: November 04, 2011, 12:02:32 PM »

My belief is that they use picscout to crawl sites for images, well the alert goes off they found one (or more) on your site, they grab a screen shot, then proceed to use archive.org or domaintools to establish how long the image has been present. I don't think they are are going this sites in search of images, that would be too labor intensive..

2651

Righthaven Lawsuits Forum / What “Beating Righthaven” means

« on: November 04, 2011, 10:40:44 AM »

Heres a good article

http://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/what-beating-righthaven-means/

2652

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Pay then sue them? Has anyone tried this.

« on: November 03, 2011, 09:40:56 PM »

collections isn't really an issue, but just another tactic they like to use...Legally they cannot collect on a "claim" nor can a collection agency hassle you for a "claim"... see the following post and be enlightened..

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/index.php/topic,2318.0.html

2653

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Hit with the Letter

« on: November 03, 2011, 07:46:50 PM »

If you're client is unwilling to fight, then your client needs to pay them and be done with it. Explain to your client that you are willing to do xxxx, if that is not acceptable to them, tell them they are on their own. Chances are GI has crawled every image and you probably won't get another letter from them, but that doesn't mean another company won't do the same. Were any of the images obtained correctly? if not you might want to remove them all and have your client properly license new images..

2654

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Hit with the Letter

« on: November 03, 2011, 02:43:18 PM »

contact them with your offer, and state that the image was immediately removed, keep any and all correspondence you get from them....you might also want to include a requesrt for proof of registration of said image.

They won't provide it, but again if  and thats a big IF it goes to court, it could work in your favor...word on the street is that a majority of their images are not properly registered, thus eliminating the option of them going for more damages..

2655

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Hit with the Letter

« on: November 03, 2011, 02:06:01 PM »

Some quick facts and opinions that might help..

1. Contacting them and making an offer, would show good faith IF it were to progress to a suit. Your client would need to do this, as they are the infringing party.

FACT: GI has NEVER filed suit over 1 image to date.
FACT: Ingnoring will not make it go away, they will send more letters an escalate it to NCS Recovery.
FACT: A simple letter to NCS Recovery refuting the "CLAIM" will stop them from contacting you. This is law.

At this point they may send it to Maccormack Law, whom will send more letters.

FACT: the statute of limitaions is 3 years from the date of the first letter, after that they can do nothing.

FACT: by retaining Oscar to draft the letter they can no longer contact the client..again this is the law.

Do you stress out over the fact that a piece of space junk could come crashing thru your house at any moment on a daily basis?? probably not, but it could happen. I've been involved in this well over 2 years now and have several clients facing the same issue ( no fault of mine I might add) and have lost maybe 3 seconds of sleep over it.. GI likes to use scare tactics in the hopes that the stress level becomes to high and folks pony up the money..thus allowing them to win the battle.