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Messages - Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

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1531
Thank you, I will do that, and I just sent you a donation for the site, the information here is just what I needed.  If I did not find this site I probably would have just ended up paying even though I feel I am right that there was no intent and it was corrected as soon as it was brought to my attention.

1532
Unfortunately until yesterday I had never heard of the Getty Extortion Letters.  I can only say that this site and forum are a blessing to all of us who have received these letters, likewise with the wealth of information I am finding here in the forums says that far too many of us have been targeted. 

I have spent the last day and a half reading, researching and documenting.  I wanted to briefly share my story and what I have done to see if anyone sees anything I may have missed or knows of another forum topic I should read that has more information I need.

I am a sole proprietor business offering remodeling and handyman services, I have a website which I run and maintain.  All images on my site are mine and of work I have done with the exception of a few photos in a “How-To” blog I have on the site offering free tips to homeowners to maintain their homes.  I would try to find a public domain image to place in the blog.  At this point I want to say that I am a firm believer in copyright law and make a genuine effort to ensure any image used that is not mine is free or public domain.  Whenever I used an image that was not mine I did make a note as to where I got it, not thinking to protect myself but in case something happened to my website and I had to rebuild a page.  I found this image though a Google search which I follow back to the site to look for any copyright notices.  By all appearances it looked as if this image belonged to the person running this site as it had the site owners name a hyphen and the tile they had given the picture.  The site had many image galleries and the picture in question was found was in a gallery called “Public Gallery” I also gave credit to this person for the picture if you rolled over it on my site.    Since it is in a blog it is dated so there is no question as to how long the image has been up which is just less than 11 months, Getty is asking for 875.00 for this.  The image in question is from Getty Images infamous Stone collection with 96,448 images at the time of this posting. 

What I have done:
1 I immediately removed the image from my website, computer and backup drives
2 Started my research, documentation and response plan.
3 Donate to this site for all the information I have found….. Thank you very much Mr. Chan, Mr. Michelen and all those who have contributed.
What I plan to do:
1 Call Getty tomorrow and talk to them explaining my situation, that the image was used unintentionally and that it has been removed (which I expect will go nowhere)
2 Send a certified letter to Getty with all of my information about the image in question
3 If they respond saying I still owe the money and wish to pursue the claim I will request information of how they arrive at the figure for the image, proof of damages incurred, sales history of the image and at what price sales were made at, ask for proof of the images registration to them exclusively as well as if the image is registered individually or in bulk.
4 if I receive a third response, depending on the tone and what is says consider using the defense letter program.

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