Topics

1

Legal Controversies Forum / e-mail

« on: December 21, 2017, 09:00:16 AM »

Hi all, I am new on here. I am a Nutrition Blogger and a single mom with low income as a writer. In 2014 I used a picture of a jar of ghee on my blog, in a post about the health benefits of fat. At the time I was a new blogger, and did not realize it was copyrighted. I did not monetize on the photo. I received a threatening letter a couple of weeks ago to remove the image and pay $1500 within 10 days. I removed the image, but do not have that kind of money. I told them I removed it, and that I was unaware it was illegal to use the image. I just received another threatening e-mail giving me 5 days to pay $1500(right before Christmas), and threatening a huge law suit, leins on my property, $150k in fines, paying their legal fees, etc. The company is called "Image protect" I am a single mom with limited income, and this is so scary to me. Do I just pay them, or does that label me as vulnerable to them? I have literally destroyed my blog removing all images (even all the ones I paid for) out of fear over this. Any help is greatly appreciated. I did schedule a call this week with Matt as well. I cannot afford a lawyer. All correspondences have been addressed to "sir or madam" and been through e-mail. I'm thinking about taking down my entire blog, even though I worked hard on it. Friends tell me to just ignore, but it's hard with those types of threats.