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Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received extortion letter from Masterfile... Have some questions
« on: August 04, 2013, 03:37:09 PM »
see my comments inline...
This is an excellent forum and I have found a lot of great advice. I have spent a lot of time reading and doing research on here. I am hoping someone can clear up some of my confusion on these extortion letters.
My client and I reside in the U.S. and as you know Masterfile is in Canada. My client received a Federal Express letter showing an image in question and demanding a sum of over $2K. We immediately removed the image in question (only one image) that was used in an ad on their website. This is a very small business and as we have seen they tend to target them.
We purchase stock images to create designs and sometimes when we receive a blog on LinkedIn with "free" graphics, vectors, etc. we will use them on occasion. This is one time we shouldn't have. The image that we got that was supposedly a free to use royalty-free image matches an image on Masterfile's site. The blog is no longer around. If you look at the two images you can see they are very similar in nature and that although not exactly the same image...the person who posted the image could have posted a new variation of it or changed the image themselves. It is not 100% the same though.
Royalty Free does not equal FREE
Here are my questions:
1. We sent an email to MF informing them that we were taking responsibility for this issue and that they were to leave our client alone. Good luck with this, ultimately it is your clients site, they will most likely cut you out of the equation, and continue to harass your client, or maybe both of you, since you admitted using the image.
2. MF immediately reduced the damages owed from about $2000 to $1300 which is still nuts. At no time have we discussed the image with them or asked them to reduce the amount. It's what they sent back immediately. This is a common image that can be bought on the other stock photography sites for around $19-40 depending where you look. Nothing special about it at all. except that it is a rights managed image in their collection, hence the higher price tag.
3. We looked up the copyright notice they sent and it is a compilation of works filed under Masterfile with a typewritten list of over 30 photographers. They claim it is an exclusive photo to them but we did find it on one other site under the same photographer. which means the image could have been purchased from the artist himself, unless you admitted to them that you got the image from a blog, then that defense is worthless for the most part.
4. The copyright form MF sent us isn't filled out correctly and just has a list of all the photographers and it is for a CD comp of all works. The title of the work for this image isn't on this copyright form. In fact none of the titles of work are on the form. We did find other copyright forms with this photographer's name but none of these matched the copyright number we were given.A good reason why this will never ever land in a courtroom.
5. We read about the lawsuit where they dropped the charges (I believe it was called Chenga?) because MF had used the compilation method. So are we in violation if this is the same method they used? Is this even a valid copyright form?these "charges" we not dropped, Masterfile LOST this case and the registrations were ruled invalid, this case is still in the appeal process, which is another reason they will probably not file suit anytime son, if they lose this appeal, their business model will be taking a pretty heavy hit.
If anyone could share any info with us or their experiences, we would appreciate it. We get that they don't care if we removed the image immediately or that we didn't use it on purpose and acquired it from a bad source. We don't make any money helping out this client and we do it to be nice. The economy here isn't that great and we help out with a few ads here and there so we wouldn't be paying that type of money for such a common image for a client that basically has no money to begin with for advertising.
We don't mind paying a reasonable amount but it looks like what we feel is reasonable and what they feel is reasonable is going to be the sticky part. Douglas Bieker does not know the definition of reasonable, he's shown this time and again..his job is to take your money, plain and simple.
Thanks!