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Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received Letter From DeBoer IP

« on: September 06, 2013, 12:08:29 PM »

They did send a proof of copyright from the copyright office, but it's just a form that says: "Webshots Uploads" and some dates. "This group of photos appears within www.webshots.com". It's all from 2004. Can they just do something that generically? There doesn't seem to be any proof presented that this photo itself was specifically copyrighted.

Sigh.....

2

Getty Images Letter Forum / Received Letter From DeBoer IP

« on: September 06, 2013, 10:19:10 AM »

I have a plugin for WordPress and on this website I had a demo store to show how the product worked. I had grabbed some images off of Google Images several years ago. I got a letter in April about one of these images. I took the image down immediately. In the letter I received, they demanded $1810 and did post the copyright records for the image. I found ELI and decided to ignore the first letter. Especially when I received the letter and the address was handwritten (very poorly). I have now received a second demand letter and they are down to $780.

I've been looking at information about Innocent Infringement and it seems to me that since there was no way to find out that this image was copyrighted and that the image itself appears on hundreds of websites without any watermark, that this should pretty clearly be a case of innocent infringement.

My question: would it be better to ignore the letter or to engage with them? (This image was displayed to the user as a 50px image and I just can't believe that they'd actually go to court over such a ridiculous thing.)

(I also have tried to sign up with the Oscar's letter program but have not had any response to two emails.)