Messages

976

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Hawaiian Art Network v. Aloha Plastic Surgery Lawsuit Settled

« on: November 06, 2012, 11:53:26 AM »

I would love to know what the terms of the settlement were, I will say that my hat is off to Aloha for standing up and fighting rather than just talking it. I hope that their example will lead others to fight if in a similar situation.

977

P2P/BitTorrent Lawsuits Forum / Double Tap - A Great Weapon Agaist Trolls

« on: November 04, 2012, 08:06:53 PM »

I found this over on www.dietrolldie.com and thought this was an excellent article. This is a tactic I have not seen used before in fighting the P2P porn trolls called Double Tap. There is a lot of information in the article and you will need to read it to get it all but the key point of it is that if the defendant is out of state from where the plaintiff is he can file a motion requiring that the plaintiff post a bond covering reasonable attorney fees and associated costs should the plaintiff lose making the troll cough up money up front on what is generally a very shaky and thin case to begin with. I love it! I hope to see more defendants in the P2P cases start to use this tactic. The entire article may be read here:

http://dietrolldie.com/2012/10/30/copyright-troll-double-tap-tactics/

978

P2P/BitTorrent Lawsuits Forum / Re: $1.5 Million Default Judgment Against Kywan Fisher (Flava Works INC

« on: November 04, 2012, 06:18:21 PM »

You are correct in that Flava is geared toward Gay videos, in the article is a link that shows a screen capture of the videos listed on the site in question and it was called "Gay Torrent".

Great posting; it's quite interesting.

Yes, it's quite a leap of faith making a connection between the person that bought the vid, and the person that seeded the file.
It would have been fairly easy to fight.

Another possibility for a defense would have been whether putting the code into the movie violated any privacy laws/agreements.
My understanding is that "Flava" provides "gay" materials.  One would have some expectation of anonymity when dealing with them.

S.G.

979

P2P/BitTorrent Lawsuits Forum / $1.5 Million Default Judgment Against Kywan Fisher (Flava Works INC

« on: November 01, 2012, 07:25:40 PM »

This is an interesting article from over at www.dietrolldie.com and is a perfect example of why you should not ignore a court summons. This is another P2P bit torrent case with a bit of a twist. Mr. Fisher actually had an account with Flava which in the account agreement stated you would not share the movies you downloaded, Mr. Fisher downloaded 10 movies which later appeared on a bit torrent site. Flava Works states they know it was Mr. Fisher's movies as when you download a movie their system puts a small unique identifying code into the movie as to who downloaded. While this looks bad for Mr. Fisher it still does not prove that it was not a roommate, malware or a hacker that did the posting. Mr. Fisher could've possibly raised enough doubts to avoid a judgment against him yet he chose to ignore the summons and had a default judgment entered against him. The judge gave Flava Works the max of $150,000 per infringement times 10 downloads was $1.5 million plus reasonable legal fees. You may read the entire article here:

http://dietrolldie.com/2012/11/01/1-5-million-default-judgment-against-kywan-fisher-flava-works-inc-112-cv-01888-ndil/

980

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: An Experiment Against Getty

« on: October 31, 2012, 12:25:48 AM »

I just wanted to give everyone that has been following my experiment an update on its status. The last communication I received from Getty images was their notice that if I did not pay they were going to escalate my case to their legal department, which in turn prompted my letter writing campaign/experiment. Today makes it exactly 6 months to the day since I received that letter and as a result of the experiment I have yet to hear a peep out of Getty, NCS or McCormack legal. I seriously doubt I will hear anything from any of them ever again as I’m sure they read the forums and are well aware that I am now prepared to do far worse at a moment’s notice should I hear from any of them.

I hope others will find this experiment useful and be able to modify it to their individual needs and use it to fend off these legalized extortion demand letters sent from copyright trolling individuals and companies. If you are new to this thread and starting it at the end, links to copies of all my correspondence, complaint letters and replies may be found here:

Here are the Letters between Myself and Getty Images:

http://www.scribd.com/my_document_collections/3777294

Here are copies of the complaint letters that I sent out along with any replies and follow-up responses.

http://www.scribd.com/my_document_collections/3777301

If you use this information please consider sharing your letters and results with your personal information redacted so that others and I can see how it works for you and I can add in the new data and update/modify the experiment as needed.

981

Legal Controversies Forum / Re: Supreme Court Hearing Case That Could Shape the Future of First Sale Rights.

« on: October 30, 2012, 11:59:34 AM »

Techdirt has now pickup up the story.  If you want to read about it there is can be found at.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121029/17262020880/supreme-court-justices-worry-about-parade-horribles-if-they-agree-you-dont-own-what-you-bought.shtml

982

Legal Controversies Forum / Supreme Court Hearing Case That Could Shape the Future of First Sale Rights.

« on: October 29, 2012, 05:52:19 PM »

­The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments today in a case called Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, and their final decision could help shape the future of "first sale," a legal doctrine that underpins the right to sell, lend, or give away the things you buy, even if those things contain copyrighted elements.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/your-right-own-under-threat

983

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: An Experiment Against Getty

« on: October 28, 2012, 10:21:04 PM »

I found another little nugget here that took place right around the same time as the backdating of the stock options and thought was fairly interesting. From January 1, 2002 through December 31, 2006 Getty was found not to have paid the proper amount of business and operating taxes, this resulted from a 2001 foreign audit in which the Getty affiliates were required to enter into a formal written agreement for administrative and management services with its parent company Getty Images. Without this agreement Getty could not deduct the cost of administrative services that Getty images provided the foreign affiliates, so Getty formed a limited liability corporation under the laws of California called Getty Management. Under the written agreement created called the General and Administrative Services Agreement (GASA) Getty images agreed to pay itself $1 million a year for handling the administrative issues and only pay taxes on the $1 million a year, yet an auditor found that Getty management incurred costs ranging between $25 million and  $98 million per year for total of approximately $307 million during the audit period. The auditor concluded that Getty owed back taxes on the difference of the money and must start paying on the total amount here forward rather than the $1 million written into the agreement.

Getty immediately paid the back taxes but sued the city of Seattle saying that they did not owe the money. During the case in the Court of Appeals for the state of Washington Division I the chief financial officer of Getty Jeffrey Dunn testified, when asked what the primary reason was that this was set up this way he replied and I quote

I think, again, the primary reason was to -- to affect the management charges to the foreign affiliates, with a secondary reason being to avoid an increase in tax in the state of Washington.

Q. Getty of Seattle could not continue to perform its management services under its contract with Getty management unless it received these payments to the cash management system to pay its expenses?

Dunn: that's correct

Dunn also testified later in a pertinent part:

so it was critical to -- critical for us to implement the process of -- of charging these management fees and getting the deductions in the foreign countries. In doing so, we would have increased our exposure to B&O tax both in the state of Washington in the city of Seattle, and so the management company structure was -- was used to shield that increase in tax.

Getty cited several different cases as precedents which they believed prove that they did not owe the tax and the court ruled that none of them applied and they did owe the tax. Getty also appealed the court's decision to the Washington state Supreme Court who refuse to hear the case.

As I said all this took place about the same time as the stock option backdating and in my opinion just as another example of how Getty images chooses not to play by the rules and operate in an unethical manner weather it is with innocent infringers they send their demand letters to, their own contributors, their stockholders and even the local and state governments. There is a lot of information contained in this case and to truly grasp it you'll need to read the documents which I am providing below:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/111396110/Getty-v-City-of-Seattle

http://www.scribd.com/doc/111396108/Getty-v-City-of-Seattle-Ruling

Request for review by Washington Supreme Court Denied Entry #8
http://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supreme/?fa=atc_supreme.display&year=2012&petition=pr120207#A1

984

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Jonathan Klein and Getty Images, a history of questionable business practices?

« on: October 28, 2012, 10:18:44 PM »

I found another little nugget here that took place right around the same time as the backdating of the stock options and thought was fairly interesting. From January 1, 2002 through December 31, 2006 Getty was found not to have paid the proper amount of business and operating taxes, this resulted from a 2001 foreign audit in which the Getty affiliates were required to enter into a formal written agreement for administrative and management services with its parent company Getty Images. Without this agreement Getty could not deduct the cost of administrative services that Getty images provided the foreign affiliates, so Getty formed a limited liability corporation under the laws of California called Getty Management. Under the written agreement created called the General and Administrative Services Agreement (GASA) Getty images agreed to pay itself $1 million a year for handling the administrative issues and only pay taxes on the $1 million a year, yet an auditor found that Getty management incurred costs ranging between $25 million and  $98 million per year for total of approximately $307 million during the audit period. The auditor concluded that Getty owed back taxes on the difference of the money and must start paying on the total amount here forward rather than the $1 million written into the agreement.

Getty immediately paid the back taxes but sued the city of Seattle saying that they did not owe the money. During the case in the Court of Appeals for the state of Washington Division I the chief financial officer of Getty Jeffrey Dunn testified, when asked what the primary reason was that this was set up this way he replied and I quote

I think, again, the primary reason was to -- to affect the management charges to the foreign affiliates, with a secondary reason being to avoid an increase in tax in the state of Washington.

Q. Getty of Seattle could not continue to perform its management services under its contract with Getty management unless it received these payments to the cash management system to pay its expenses?

Dunn: that's correct

Dunn also testified later in a pertinent part:

so it was critical to -- critical for us to implement the process of -- of charging these management fees and getting the deductions in the foreign countries. In doing so, we would have increased our exposure to B&O tax both in the state of Washington in the city of Seattle, and so the management company structure was -- was used to shield that increase in tax.

Getty cited several different cases as precedents which they believed prove that they did not owe the tax and the court ruled that none of them applied and they did owe the tax. Getty also appealed the court's decision to the Washington state Supreme Court who refuse to hear the case.

As I said all this took place about the same time as the stock option backdating and in my opinion just as another example of how Getty images chooses not to play by the rules and operate in an unethical manner weather it is with innocent infringers they send their demand letters to, their own contributors, their stockholders and even the local and state governments. There is a lot of information contained in this case and to truly grasp it you'll need to read the documents which I am providing below:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/111396110/Getty-v-City-of-Seattle

http://www.scribd.com/doc/111396108/Getty-v-City-of-Seattle-Ruling

Request for review by Washington Supreme Court Denied Entry #8
http://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supreme/?fa=atc_supreme.display&year=2012&petition=pr120207#A1

985

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Jonathan Klein and Getty Images Know How to Treat Their Contributors – Not.

« on: October 27, 2012, 09:13:13 PM »

Very true Oscar but from what I have read it seems of late Getty continues to take more and more of of the profits and give their contributors less and less.

Great post Greg. Like all other media, digital images are now being controlled by large companies that smaller independent ones just can't compete with. Getty consolidated the industry by buying up all the small and not so small ones over time. With all those images and all that money, no one can match their distribution stream and reach.  Your picture has a greater chance of being in major media and getting exposure if its licensed through Getty than most other outlets. So most photogs put up with a lot to get that potential exposure. Looks like the ones that sued got some form of settlement and dropped it.

986

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Johnathan Klein and Getty Images - Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

« on: October 27, 2012, 08:55:05 PM »

Thank you very much Oscar!

987

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Defense Team Grows Again! Welcome Greg Troy, Newest ELI Team Member!

« on: October 26, 2012, 07:08:06 PM »

Thank you Oscar, Jerry and Moe!

@Jerry, I tend to agree that the executive washroom appears to be lacking a little something although the plant is a nice touch while the window view I think captures very nicely the "unleash hell"phrase I like to use or as Stinger has coined it "The War to End All Wars with Getty"

988

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Defense Team Grows Again! Welcome Greg Troy, Newest ELI Team Member!

« on: October 25, 2012, 04:30:20 PM »

Thank you very much SG!

989

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Gettyimage letter demanding $875 for copyright infringement.

« on: October 25, 2012, 04:27:50 PM »

You are very welcome and I am glad to see you are going to fight this.

Ok, Greg. Thank you for your time, concern and input. I started the ball rolling with Gettyimages already. I will put a complete package up on this forum (of the letters, responses, etc.) at the appropriate time for the edification of all forum members to aid them in their dealings as well.

990

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Defense Team Grows Again! Welcome Greg Troy, Newest ELI Team Member!

« on: October 25, 2012, 11:15:58 AM »

Thanks Stinger, I really appreciate your comments. We are all a community here and have to help each other out. I can't think of anywhere else that has what Matthew has done here. We have a very diverse group here and that  And knowledgeable is what makes us strong.