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Topics - DrumGuy23

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Jousting Windmills
« on: February 08, 2018, 12:05:37 AM »
Just as Don Quixote jousted windmills, I've decided to do the same thing. I wrote up my threats from Higbee so far, along with my story and proof that I got the image from a "public domain" site, and the explanation of how many Americans are being threatened by him, and sent it to the "60 Minutes" news show tip line.
Tomorrow morning I'm making an appointment with the local District Attorney to see if there's any way that this can be construed as extortion.
Today I contacted the regional television news outlet to see if they are interested in doing a story on this scam.
I also contacted the regional newspaper for the same purpose.
In scouring the internet for stories, I've seen that Higbee has threatened people for using photos that they took themselves, and for properly attributed photos from Wikipedia Commons, among other things. They aren't examining or discriminating in their threats, so they probably include kids with their school projects, scout troops, etc. Makes for one hell of a great news story.
My next stop will be the Postal Service - if he can be seen as running a scam, that's a federal offense that has serious implications.
After that, I'm looking to the State Bar of California. If enough complaints come in, they may want to take a closer look at this character.
What will come of all this? Probably nothing. But it damn sure makes me feel good!

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / A new twist on Higbee
« on: February 03, 2018, 03:18:24 PM »
The first part of my story is much like the others in the Higbee forum: a letter showed up claiming infringement, demanding money, had the offending photo, etc. I have a website whose theme is drumming, and I occasionally include other interesting things. About a year ago I had a paramedic tell me about a simple home remedy for a poisonous plant, and I shared that with web visitors. I found what I thought was a public domain photo of a poisonous plant online, and included it as an illustration.

The letter sounded like a scam to me, so I tossed it. As a composing musician, copyright is important to me, so I immediately deleted the photo from my server just as a courtesy. It had nothing to do with the theme of the website, and was basically unnecessary and unimportant. It was very small, 200 x 150, but the image was stored on my server at the time.

And now for the twist. The other interesting thing was that none of the letters were addressed to me - they were addressed to the nickname of my studio, "xxxx".

Multiple letters continued to arrive, I tossed them without reading, continuing to assume it was a scam. If it were a serious legal issue, I assumed that they would have been sent by registered mail so that it could be proven in a court of law that they had been received by the correct person.

Next I got a letter from Higbee & Asso saying that they were representing the copyright holder and that if they don't receive $1000 from me in two weeks, they were going to sue. Lots of scary language. Really scary language - but you're already familiar with that from this forum.

Points:

1) In looking up copyright law, I found a site saying that the first order of business in a copyright case is for the plaintiff to issue a cease and desist order. That never happened. Their first contact was with a letter that was sent presorted first class demanding money, which I merely scanned. I don't know if the cease & desist info is correct, but one didn't come.

2) They have never sent a letter to me by my name or any legal entity (a person, a company, etc). For example, if the name of my website was "xxxx," which was the nickname of my studio, then every letter has come to "xxxx" which is not a legal entity - there's no person, corporation, company, LLC, DBA, etc under that name. At least, connected to me; there are probably legal "xxxx" names being used in the country. The Higbee letter begins, "Dear xxxx." No entity under that name has a bank account or is officially registered anywhere - it's simply a nickname that everyone uses casually, not legally.

3) In addition to all this, I believe that I can claim fair use for a few reasons: a) the photo was used to educate - to pass on information about a home remedy for people who had been exposed to this plant; b) no money was made - it is a free site, it costs nothing to view, and in reading the text with the photo, the visitor learned a first aid tip... it was therefore purely educational; c) the use of the photo had nothing at all to do with the overall theme of the website, which is drumming.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to court, but based on what I've said, the twist to this is that they'd be suing a non-legal entity. No legal person or entity has even been notified of the supposed copyright infringement.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly and sincerely appreciated - thanks.

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