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« on: June 04, 2015, 11:27:45 AM »
This is a great example as to why one should not engage them. People tend to make statements that could come back and bite them. This statement is not entirely true ( even though you state you know copyright law ):
"However, in order to be enforceable, it has to be registered with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress."
Images, works, ect do NOT have to be registered in order to enforce them, BUT it does make the amount collectable much lower.
This statement could also backfire:
"My entire site is educational, providing spiritual teachings that many people have found of value to them in living their lives. Until you can provide me with specific and concrete reasons as to why my prior use of this image was NOT "fair use," there is nothing more to discuss and I will not pay you anything."
in Terms of fair use, you would need to use the image as the educational part, you're site being educational would not be enough. To me it sounds as if the image was just that an image, which was not used for criticism, education, research nor was the image commented on.. I'm no lawyer, but I don't see you winning a fair use argument here. Where you might win is in the fact that the image is available for sale on multiple sites, but then again maybe not as you have freely admitted to them that you grabbed it elsewhere downstream. It is the end-users responsibility to use due diligence in sourcing the image, not having a watermark is not sufficient, as that is not required by law, add to the fact that had you researched the image before hand, you would have known it was available at multiple sources...you just gave them this little tidbit which does not help you case in any way...
Not that any of this matters, I highly doubt they wll file suit over a single image, but you never know..in the meantime I would expect to hear from them again.
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