Messages

2851

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Masterfile people responsible for your miseries

« on: July 22, 2011, 03:30:15 PM »

And I suppose you have dealt directly with this individual?? I respectfully ask that you heed Oscar's suggestion, this is the best site on the net regarding this situation, it has helped numerous folks to no end. These types of posts will not benefit anyone and could risk the reputation of this wonderful resource..

2852

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: PicScout is possibly flawed

« on: July 22, 2011, 11:37:43 AM »

I'm wondering what Oscar's thoughts on this would be, hopefully he'll see this post and hopefully my client will also bring this to his attention when she contacts him..

2853

Getty Images Letter Forum / PicScout is possibly flawed

« on: July 22, 2011, 08:06:36 AM »

A client brought to my attention that she recieved the GI letter, after her sending me copies to review the info I noticed the following.

1. the letter is claiming 4 infringements (875.00 for each image)
2. as usuaul they show images of the images from thier library with corresponding catalog numbers
3. they also provide the side by side screenshots of the images being used..

however..the image they are claiming is a single image from a single page, yet they claim their are 4 images!
yes all 4 images in GI catalog are similar, but the screenshots they provide are clearly all from the same page within the site containing only 1 image.

So is Getty stating that someone may have used 4 of thier images and merged them together to make 1 image, or could this possibly be a flaw within picscout?
My thinking is the latter which could prove to be something significant in terms of GI proving to a court that these are their images..

Just some food for thought, for all involved, be sure to review your letters very carefully!

In the meantime my client will be contacting Oscars office to draft a letter.

2854

Getty Images Letter Forum / I just have to share this!

« on: July 21, 2011, 01:39:02 PM »

Greetings,
I'm not looking for advise, as unfortunately I'm already well versed with the GI situation. However I just wanted to share about a client of mine who finds herself in a pickle...

A suit was filed against my client for the unlawful use of a good majority of content on her site. Apparently she went and grabbed a bunch of articles and proceeded to use them. These articles presumably came from a source that sells said articles. Anyway they are suing her for 6k, and she fired off an email to them explaining "she was using the text as a placeholder" thus admitting guilt right out of the gate..So heres the real kicker..

When I developed her site we had a very long and detailed discussion on the proper use of images, she was made aware of ramifications if she so chose to use any images without a license agreement. She has well over 100 images on her site all of which came from google searches.. With this many images some if not all are sure to be GI, corbis or MF images. I have just had another long discussion with her stating that she should take the site offline immediately, or she may have a HUGE problem on her hands, she has flat out refused to do so, stating "I'll take my chances."

I have since fired of an email to her for her to sign and return absolving my company from any responsability. ( a bit overkill and not needed, but at least my side of the street is clean)...

Just goes to show that sometimes some people just can't see the forest thru the trees..so now I wait for the pickle to become a barrel of pickles..

2855

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty letter received today...

« on: July 14, 2011, 09:20:17 AM »

Let me see if I understand this correctly...the image in question was taken from another site, and hosted on your server under your domain?? If so it will be your battle to fight, as the other site may have license to use the image, but that doesn't give them the okay to let you use the image, hence you get the letter and problems associated with it.

2856

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copyright registration by Getty

« on: June 28, 2011, 09:33:25 AM »

I "think" GI does not have all of the images in question registered, however i would not depend solely on your search results, some may be registered as "collections" and may not be returned in your search results.
Naturally GI is not going to provide you proof that they are or are not registered, they like to tell us that, this is something that would be shown in court..again a part of thier scare tactic.

2857

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Boxedart.com image suits.

« on: June 27, 2011, 03:54:45 PM »

I think getty sued template-monster, and TM settled out of court, hence if you have an issue with GI due to a template you purchased thru TM, TM will take care of it for you, provding you can supply proof that you bought the template from them..Not sure about boxed-art I would suggest contacting their support dept and going from there or just go right to the parent comapny Big Resources, Inc.

Big Resources, Inc.
PO Box 46175
Tampa, FL 33646
Support: https://www.boxedart.com/support/index.php
Corporate Headquarters: (812) 762-4251

I've read in a few other forums, that boxed-art does not like to reply to these issues, so it may be best to contact them directly.
HTH

2858

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Image used was from Google Images

« on: June 27, 2011, 03:40:38 PM »

I may be way off base here, but i'll give another 2 cents.. I think the reason why alot of folks haven't contacted the AG is becuase what getty is doing is within the law, it's how they are going about it that is questionable from an ethical standpoint.. I would also venture to guess that in the grand scheme of things they are counting on most mom&pops to be freaked by this demand and that they just pony up the money to make it go away..it's a money maker for GI. Those of us that stand up to them are a mere splinter in their toe and surely there are not enough of us ( at this point) to have them consider changing.

2859

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Image used was from Google Images

« on: June 27, 2011, 07:11:18 AM »

Greetings and welcome to the family,

Theres is wealth of info here, so my fisrt suggestion is to read as much as possible to get yourself educated.

maybe some of this will help.
1.Oscar is still drafting letters, contact his office directly and be patient as he is very busy.
2. Removing your site from archive.org was a good move, tho I'm sure getty has screen shots already.
3. Claiming you got the images from google does not give you a leg to stand on / watermark or no watermark doesn't much matter.
4. Removing the images from your site was a good move!
5. Getty has not been known to file suit over 1 image as the cost involved is not worth the effort ( they do this to make money not spend  it)
6. your letter to them as least shows good will, but will most likely fall on death ears, they will continue to contact you, and won't provide you any proof.


hope this helps and rest easy, you're not alone!

2860

Getty Images Letter Forum / Getty / Righthaven

« on: June 15, 2011, 09:02:31 AM »

Can the recent development with Righthaven ( being tossed ) have any effect on What Getty is pulling??
Does Getty own the "exclusive Rights" of these images, I was under the impression they only manage most images on behalf of the photog/artist, whom I would think still owns the exclusive rights??..something else that just popped into my head..

say for example I contact a photog and request permission to use an image, he grants me permission I have an email staing such, whilst at the same time this image is also in getty's library.. so I use the images and along comes Getty with their "claim to fame"..yes I have no invoice, but I do have the email.. I'd be willing to bet getty would not stand down and would probably reply with something along the lines of "this is not good enough"..l That was my situation I had the license for an image but no invoice going back 12 years or so.. the answer in regards to the licence.." anybody could create that"..

2861

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Strange third letter from Getty, community input requested.

« on: June 08, 2011, 10:43:36 AM »

Wow, I just rechecked the image allegedly infringed upon and noticed with astonishment that it's license price went up from $49 per three month to $480!!!  Anybody is seeing thing with their images? Too bad I did not print the old price out to use as an argument.

try using the wayback machine, with any luck it might be archived! gotta fight fire with fire!

2862

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Can we be sued for wayback machine continuing to display the photo in question?

« on: June 07, 2011, 09:25:06 AM »

buddhapi's right about the meta-tag.  But, I think that domaintools ignores those tags, as they're making money serving the copyright trolls these days.
If anyone has the IP address(es) of the domaintools robot spider, I'd like to know.
I want to add those to my .htaccess file, thereby blocking access to my site.
If your web server uses Apache, you can make an .htacess file, too.

S.G.

According to domain tools...
Robots.txt
A. Is SurveyBot compliant? SurveyBot obeys all known guidelines. If SurveyBot is denied access to a site it will not include web content from that website. However it will still record miscellaneous information such as what web server the site is running and the status of the website (active/parked/deleted).
 
SurveyBot uses a User Agent field to idenfiy itself to websites. The user agent will look like:

SurveyBot/2.3 (DomainTools)

D. Opting-out of Crawling
SurveyBot only gathers one page per domain, the default document located at "/". But before we visit your website we will first consult the "/robots.txt" file to see if it has permission to crawl the entire site. SurveyBot bot looks for the following tags and that would stop the crawl and also remove your content from our website. The first tags bans all robots, the second group of tags only exclude SurveyBot.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

User-agent: SurveyBot
Disallow: /

will post back when I get the ip address, as this would be the preferred method.

::EDIT:: It appears the Ip range for domaintools is 64.246.160.0 - 64.246.191.255 

2863

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Confused victim/suspect.... whatever I am :)

« on: May 28, 2011, 09:22:26 AM »

Welcome the the ELI forum! Sorry you're here with the rest of us...a couple of points.

1. Images found thru google are NOT public domain by any means, someone , somewhere owns the copyright to all of those images.
2. I would suggest not ignoring the letter, it will not go away, they will continue to contact you, then resort to having a collection agency contact you, then possibly escalating the matter with a third draft of the loetter.
3. Thus far Getty has not filed any suits involving single images ( this may change in the future)
4. I hired Oscar to draft my letter nad have not heard a word since ( good news as far as I am concerned)
5. What Getty is doing is not illegal, it may not be the appropiate way to handle this, but thats got nothing to do with the way the law is written.

This forum is full of useful information I suggest reading thru as much as possible to get a better handle on whats going on and how to best approach it from your particular situation.
HTH

2864

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Can we be sued for wayback machine continuing to display the photo in question?

« on: May 25, 2011, 02:15:32 PM »

adding a meta-tag to your pages directing robots to not archive should help going forward..I know archive.org will honor requests for removal, but not sure about domaintools.

2865

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Someone says this new forum "blows"

« on: May 11, 2011, 03:44:32 PM »

A. it doesn't blow or suck, it's new and improved, as with anything else it might take a little getting used to.
B. If it makes your and Oscars life easier all the better!
C. How would I respond??? I personally would test out that new ban button you have, but thats just me.

Again thanx for all you do! some of us ( probably most) appreciate it!

Bob Krausankas