Messages

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: February 03, 2017, 07:50:20 AM »

I've posted previously about being one of the targets, looks like there's a lot of us.
Some useful info I found, FYI for all -
- if you want to check whether the image is actually included in the copyright they sent you, you can do so by "inspecting the copyright deposit". It costs $100. The copyright office said "Processing your request will begin once the U.S. Copyright Office receives the payment of applicable fees. To expedite receipt of payment, we recommend calling Records Research and Certification at 202-707-6787 to submit payment by credit card.  The office is open Monday through Friday (except holidays), from 8:30am - 5:00pm EST. A staff member will assist you with payment." Email [email protected]
- some informal (and too late :-s) legal advice I got was to keep any response minimal - "removed image" or some such. There is personal liability possible even if this was done through a corporation etc i.e. it seems copyright infringement, if proven, can "pierce the corporate veil" for personal liability for statutory damages or other settlement. I don't know all the legal details here by a long shot, so this is not legal advice, but just be careful what you share with them.

Thanks to folks who are sharing their approach - ignore it, negotiate (seems like they go as low as $750), threaten to counter-sue for entrapment. I let them know the image was removed etc - they continue to harass via email and letter. I am getting legal advice before I decide whether to ignore, settle, or what. But my heart rate is more normalized now that I have the support of this forum. Needless to say this is an unneeded and unwelcome waste of time and $ :-s
Thanks.

I can confirm this forum has helped me a lot for my own piece of mind.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: January 05, 2017, 03:08:32 PM »

I'm aware of yet another that has been the victim of the Nick Youngson honeytrap and has now received the $5K demand letter from Higbee.  What is the recommended course of action?

Good afternoon,

see my previous posts, i received a letter, educated myself, and if and when they reach out to me, i will take further action.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: January 05, 2017, 03:07:38 PM »

Yes, I received the submission. I will look into this further after the holidays.

thanks

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 28, 2016, 03:42:46 PM »

I'd like to see a copy of the Liebowtiz letter if you'd like to email it to me at matt30060 / gmail. This appears to be a new development.  All the other letters I have seen is from Higbee.

I received the same warning letter yesterday Dec 17, but it was coming from Liebowitz Law Firm in New York.

Matthew, have you received my email?

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 26, 2016, 10:17:24 AM »

Count me in.
I too am being harassed by Higbee. I received a notice from them in the mail on Saturday, 12/17/2016. The very next day they sent a email requesting payment of $5000.00. I just received another email today (Wednesday) trying to collect again. I have a copy of the creative commons license from pixserver.org. I sent a letter to the Defense Letter Program at '[email protected]' but I have not heard back from them yet.

Interesting, i did not know there was an agency that was dealing with this stuff!

PS: my letter was from Liebowitz, but i have not yet received an email, just a letter with a draft "law suit" paperwork.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 26, 2016, 10:16:07 AM »

The small business that I work for has also received one of these letters, from Higbee and Associates. I posted the image after getting it from PicServer, failing to notice the "must attribute" part. Our lawyers have contacted Higbee and Associates and the minimum settlement they are willing to accept is $750. My boss is wanting to settle just to be done with it, as her lawyers are charging $350 an hour to deal with this. We offered to buy the image, (after immediately removing it).

Here are my questions: has anyone else dealing with this photographer and firm reached a settlement? If so, do you mind sharing what it is?

UPDATE: we have decided to ignore this, and if we continue to be harassed, will threaten a counter lawsuit for entrapment. If anyone else being threatened by this photographer would like to add their name to our list we would appreciate your information. Please send an email to julie at josiahmorgan dot com

I can forward you my information and case information. I have also replied to this thread with some info.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 26, 2016, 10:15:03 AM »

I'd like to see a copy of the Liebowtiz letter if you'd like to email it to me at matt30060 / gmail. This appears to be a new development.  All the other letters I have seen is from Higbee.

I received the same warning letter yesterday Dec 17, but it was coming from Liebowitz Law Firm in New York.

I will do this asap, i just got back from a family vacation. I already replied with some email i received from somebody, HOWEVER this concerned a different image than the Liebowitz letter. That image has already been deleted on my website.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 26, 2016, 10:12:38 AM »

Good morning, and Merry Christmas.

I have been offline for about a week now, my family from Belgium was in town so we went to Walt Disney Orlando with our 11 month old. Good experience and quality family time!

That being said, back to the our issue at hand:
- I received an email from Scott Moses, Scott Moses <[email protected]>, who emailed the following:

Dear Sir/Madam,

A photo was posted onto your website without appropriate attribution. The original photo, to which we own the license, can be found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8541370656/

The unauthorized and infringing instance of the image can be found at: http://www.delraycomputers.com/webdesign-boca-raton/

Under the Creative Commons license, you are free to use the image but you must give appropriate credit. Please attribute the image to StartBloggingOnline.com and link to: http://startbloggingonline.com

Thank you.

Respectfully,
Scott Moses

=> This is the right way to do it, without any intimidation or scare tactics. And he clearly states the image(s) used under the Creative Commons license just needs an attribution to the author. I do not see the point of people filing a law suit for a picture used on a blog, unless it is a nationwide TV campaign of some sort. This email can also be used as leverage and/or leverage if this should escalate any further.

=> I also mentioned "image courtesy of .. " in my footer of my website.

PS: please note the Scott Moses email concerned a different image than the one Liebowitz has sent me.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 18, 2016, 09:04:09 AM »

@albert

read this thread: http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/hawaiian-letters-lawsuits-forum/aloha-plastic-surgery-submits-counter-claim/

and here: http://copyright-trolls.com/2.0/in-the-event-that-adlife-marketing-files-suits-against-you/

It literally turns my stomach people would do this to extort hard working business owners and try to scam them.
I think we should all get together and file a case against these actions from N Youngson.
i mean, one week before Christmas and they are still trying to financially ruin small business owners.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 18, 2016, 09:01:18 AM »

I have just received one of these letters from the usage of a image by this photographer. 

I am wondering what plan of action should I take?

I obtained the image through the creativecommons.org search which led me to a site (different from the ones listed in this thread) which directly links to the photographers site.  (it appears to be possibly owned by the photographer as the banners on it and all images / links point to his site)

On the first website, (where the image was obtained from) displayed below the image is : " This image _________  may be used for free even for commercial purposes.

The image _________ below is licensed by it's creator under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which permits the free use of the image for any purpose including commercial use and also permits the image to be modified. "

Based upon this understanding I used the image.

Had I've known that purchasing a license was required I would have either (a) looked elsewhere or (b) paid for a license like I have done in the past.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Same here, picserver.org tries to lure people in and then you get scammed or get a letter like this.
How can we find out who is operating picserver.org?

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 18, 2016, 09:00:11 AM »

I'll agree that, at first blush, this appears to be some blatant scumfuckery; the website jphotostyle.com only has images by Nick Youngson. What sets my alarm bells ringing is that the WHOIS for jphotostyle.com is cloaked by a privacy service and was purchased via GoDaddy in Montenegro.

As working photographer, I'm absolutely f'n appalled by what appears to indeed be a blatant attempt at entrapment; I'm going to focus on just one particular image which implies this. Take a look at the picture at the following URL

http://stock-photos.nyphotographic.com/food-drink/instant-coffee02/

A javascript query of the server file above cites that the image file was last modified on March 11 of 2015.

The very first published use of this photograph that I can find is at http://3stylelife.com/hello-world, and a query of the server returns that the relevant image was last modified on 12 December of 2014, though the article that uses it cites a date of publication of September 9 of 2013.

Youngson's earliest copyright registered certificate is a group registration titled still-images-13-08-24 under certificate VAu-1-149-100, with an effective date of registration being August 26, 2013; this appears to be the only of Youngson's certificates that predates the published use of the coffee bean picture as on 3lifestyle.com

Now I wanted to see if there were any published uses of this specific photograph that predated either the published use on 3stylelife.com and/or the registration certificate... and I got one hit: a Russian language website called finska.ru, on a page with URL http://finska.ru/category_20.html; Google had indexed the page back on 12 October of 2010 and reported the image on that site.

Now, this isn't a smoking gun as the indexing pointed to the following file

http://finska.ru/data/images/stati/luchshiy-rastvorimyy-kofe/1.png

The reported date/time this image was last modified was on 9 September of 2015.

Regardless, one of the other things that has my alarm bells ringing is that all images on the website 3lifestyle.com are only from NYPhotographic; I can't wrap my head around as to why this would be, but one might suppose that Mr. Youngson created the website 3lifestyle.com so that his own business - nyphotographic.com - would show backlinks and start to rise up search engine rankings.

Now my alarm bells ring extra-loud for two more reasons: there's a robots.txt file on 3stylelife.com that doesn't allow archival indexing, and the WHOIS data for the site is obfuscated via DomainsByProxy.

Lastly, Mr. Youngson appears to have a very narrow oeuvre of images that also appear to be of very low quality (from a sharpness, lighting & compositional sense). It just strikes me as odd that someone would go to the trouble of registering a body of work with the Copyright Office and then offering it up for both Creative Commons uses and also paid licensing.

It's odder still when you look at the following archived snapshot of jphotostyle.com

http://web.archive.org/web/20140104041339/http://jphotostyle.com

I believe in strong copyrights, and I absolutely believe in the right of creators to seek fair compensation for unlicensed uses of their work - and that sometimes litigation is the only route to that end... but I equally believe that the laws, as written, should not be abused, and anyone who appears to be doing so absolutely should be called out for it.

Good constructive feedback there, highly appreciated.
Where can we check to see if the image is indeed fully copyrighted?
I mean, not just anybody can upload a photograph and claim copyright?
Isn't there a process like with a Trademark?

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 18, 2016, 08:58:26 AM »

I bring a warning and information about a Nicholas (Nick) Youngson (UK photographer) of NYPhotographic.com. He is represented by Higbee & Associates here in the U.S. In a short amount of time, I have run into the Nick Youngson / NYPhotographic free image/"Creative Commons" honey-trap.

I received the same warning letter yesterday Dec 17, but it was coming from Liebowitz Law Firm in New York.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Beware of Photographer Nicholas (Nick) Youngson of NYPhotographic.com

« on: December 18, 2016, 08:55:25 AM »

Good morning,

i also received a letter on Dec 17, 2016 from this lawfirm representing N. Youngson.
They are called LIEBOWITZ LAW FIRM from New York.

In regards to the image used, this is the image on PICSERVER.ORG:
http://www.picserver.org/m/marketing.html

I have removed the image from my website as stated by Matthew Chan here on this forum.

It also showed up as "labeled for Reuse" on Google where it sent me to picserver.org
I agree people stop reading after "Free to reuse" is mentioned on the website(s).

On Picserver, apparently you need to read the small print.
Here is the small print for the licenses:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The specific image can be bought for $9.95
http://stock-photos.nyphotographic.com/highway-signs/marketing/

And apparently Nick Youngson is located in the UK, and the Licensee Contact Name has an email address that is not operational. Just try to go to www.jones.com -> not working
http://stock-photos.nyphotographic.com/licence.html

And reading this thread, this is nto the first time they are trying to "scam" people into money.
I am a hard working one man business owner, and i do not have this kind of money to float.

just wondering what you guys have done to move forward?

• Leave it as-is, although the letter states to reply withing 7 days
• Reply to the letter themselves, being all apologetic. But then i have a feeling they have you hooked and will extort you for money
• Reply to the letter through a lawyer, letting them know not to mess with you

Thanks,
Kev