Topics

1

Getty Images Letter Forum / Who owns who in the Stock Photo Industry?

« on: November 13, 2011, 10:57:18 PM »

Here is a list of companies that Getty, Masterfile, Corbis, and other stock companies own.

Getty: iStock, JupiterImages (StockXpert and HAAP Media Ltd), PhotoLibrary, PunchStock, F1online(not sure - can anyone confirm?), Stock.XCHNG

Masterfile: Crestock, SuperStock

Corbis: Veer

Independent (of these Letters)
ShutterStock
Dreamstime    
Fotolia    
CanStockPhoto    
BigStockPhoto
InMagine

Please correct me and add to this list.

Also, am I correct that Getty will send the letter on behalf of all the smaller companies they acquired? Have we seen letters directly from the acquired companies?

2

Getty Images Letter Forum / How they find you...

« on: November 08, 2011, 01:06:22 AM »

Humor me guys, I've been thinking a lot about how these companies find the "end" user.

At this point we all know that they are using at least one bot: PicScout. (there might be more, but this is the most well known)

1. The bot crawls the web 24/7
2. It flags images and crawls the entire "infringing site".
(From here... I'm assuming the next steps)
3. The lovely employees of GI (and/or its network of friends) will then look at this site.
4. Someone or something finds out details about the "end" user.
5. The letters are more than likely handled by an automated process and sent off.
6. Some people pay and some play the lovely waiting game.

It's step 4 that I really am curious about. How is it that GI (and friends) find out who/where the end users are?
Yes, most businesses will be easy to find because they list things right on the website. However, some businesses only list a phone number or email. Would GI just call them to try and trackdown where they are? In the case of email, if GI sends the letter through this channel... it doesn't seem like it's all that "official" and wouldn't hold up well in court to sue. Emails can be lost.

Then, there are those who get bullied over their personal blogs. Most of these blogs will never have an address or phone number attached. At most, they might have an email. Once again, if GI contacts over email, that doesn't seem like it's all that "official" and wouldn't be a great leg to stand on for a lawsuit.

But what happens when there is who.is protection on those sites (that don't have attached addresses, phone numbers, or emails)? How far has GI gone to find this information?

I've only found a couple posts on the forums that were about non-business sites, so I can't form much of an opinion on this. Thoughts?

3

Getty Images Letter Forum / Hit with the Letter

« on: November 02, 2011, 09:12:08 PM »

Hello Forum,

Firstly, thank you for creating such a helpful community. I appreciate the time and effort that everyone puts forth here. In any case, a past client of mine just received the Getty Letter today through snail-mail (they claimed that they have attempted to contact her twice before-which isn't true). I felt awful about the entire situation and I told her to direct any of their information to me. After reading the forum, it doesn't seem like I can absorb the issue with GI from her. In any case, I deleted the image from the site and have also requested Archive.org to delete old caches.

GI is demanding around $900 for this one image. Which is pricey... especially since it's a small image. The way in which I obtained this image is unfortunately, bad luck for me. I generally use free stock image sites and believe that this was placed on one of those sources. I think I'm retiring from websites altogether after this... such a headache.

What I want to do is make this become a non-issue for my client. So I believe that these are my only options:
1. Pay in full (which is outrageous) - No one wants to do this
2. Write a letter into GI on behave of my client asking for them to lower the cost - It seems that some people are able to get them to lower the demand to around $600. Has anyone been able to get it down lower? If so, how should this be approached?
3. Pay Oscar to write a letter. However, could anyone explain the $195 letter to me? I understand that Oscar writes in the first letter and will even write a 2nd letter should GI respond to his initially letter. This letter should indicate to GI that any further contact should be done directly with Oscar. However, I don't get what happens after this point on Oscar's end. GI will most likely continue to mail him and demand things, won't this communication go on for longer than 2 letters? Also, once I pay Oscar his fee, is it likely that this will only prolong the fee and I will eventually have to pay GI the full amount? Also, if this only prolongs the lawsuit, would they be able to try to sue for more money? I'm not legally savvy, and believe me, I've been trying to absorb as much as I can in the last 4 hours. Placing Oscar as my middleman, isn't it the same as ignoring the issue if GI comes back with more demands?

I'm sorry for my questions, but what was done as a favor is now causing me a lot of pain. And I wish I was in a more financially sound place to just throw money at the problem and make it go away. Thank you for any comments and your time in reading this.


Also... If I were to hire Oscar for my client, should I try method 2 first? Call or Email (probably this route to have proof) to lower the amount to like $200-$250?

BTW - According to this letter its their 3rd attempt and our "due" date for response is by the end of this week.