This scam has been running for years. From memory I think it's some spider called picserve, it used to come from Switzerland I think, a nuisance I've automatically blocked from every server I've set up for years, along with a few thousand other addresses.
They tried it on me ages ago. I threatened to have them prosecuted for extortion (I meant it too) and they lost interest very quickly. If - I repeat if - they ever took anyone to court they would have a huge problem proving their case. If they proved it they would have a huge problem justifying their ridiculous charges. If they justified them they would have a huge problem enforcing the judgement.
Parasites like these rely on finding the odd few mugs who are so frightened they pay up. The more people pay up, the more people they threaten.
If you're really that worried, use a proxy service for your domain name registrant in future.
It's a good one though because the mugs often turn up on these threads as born again advocates of paying the Getty tax. It's only after you've delved deep that you find out they are past victims who have jellied at the first email contact.Originally Posted by lauriebred
Hmmmm. I wouldn't regard what Getty are doing as a scam. They're simply protecting the copyright of their photos.
I got hit with a £900 bill from them and I settled with an out of court payment. I won't go into details but it was substantially less than £900. They do take people to court - see here: The real cost of being sued by Getty | Copyright Action
For my part, it was an oversight on using an image from Google Images that, it turns out, belonged to them.
Images are dirt cheap through Fotolia, Big Stock, etc., and my advice is to play by the rules. You'll end up paying a lot more than 90p for a legit image!!!
"Copyright enforcement
Getty Images uses a firm called PicScout to scan the web for unauthorized and unlicensed usages of its protected images. Websites that are found to be in violation are sent financial settlements that retroactively licensed the image. Getty is notorious for sending letters for final demands due to copyright infringement. However, the settlements also demand damages, which are said to have been incurred against the copyright holder. Settlement demands are typically more than $1,000 per photograph, and are based upon Getty's highest possible price for unlimited-use rights-managed photos. Getty seldom takes individuals to court. For this reason, the letter has become widely referred to by recipients as the "Getty Extortion Letter".[17]
Thousands of these letters have been sent out, yet as of October 2005, Getty had not taken any of these potential cases to court.[18][19][20] In 2008, Getty Images lost a lawsuit in Germany.[21] Getty claimed unauthorized usage, but the defendant could prove authorized usage as he had bought a retroactive license directly from the photographer.
In 2008, Getty published a notice to its contributors describing how a court decision in New York makes it more difficult to obtain damages for infringement in the USA on images that are not registered at the United States Copyright Office. The letter strongly encouraged photographers to register their images.[22]"
From Wikipedia
There is a record of ONE court case being brought by Getty and won here:
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=10367
Sell your domain names without commission! www.nameseller.co.uk/
Its called Picscout, from Israel.
The thing I don't like here is they are spidering everyones sites and costing them money on bandwidth, just on the offchance of finding something infringing. So you're paying them to look through your site to see if they can find anything to sue you over lol.
Had a brief look before about how to block their bot and never came up with anything, as I'm not sure if it uses its own useragent, or cloaks as something else.
On the Picscout site they harp on about 85% of web images being used without permission. Now ignoring the impossibility of arriving at that figure, surely this suggests there is a greater need to educate people on web copyright than to extort cash from them.
A better solution would be to contact the offender, highlighting the problem (and the effect on photographers etc of IP theft) and offering an account at iStock (or whatever site holds the image) with the 'option' of putting in £50 or whatever to be used for future purchases. If they refuse then take it further. They get a new customer who was previously just harvesting images from Google who in future won't risk it and will probably use the iStock account from then on.
But I guess letters demanding $2000 just make them more money in the short term.
Rocky (05-08-11)
If someone sues you for the odd couple of grand you apply for it to be tried by arbitration in the small claims court. This is usually granted unless there are particular reasons why not. You also ask for a hearing in your local court which, if you are a small trader being threatened by a big company, you may well get. There are very rigid rules on costs in the small claims court; hardly anything can be claimed and hiring expensive barristers is a bit of a waste of time because the court won't award costs for them. The arbitrators are usually pretty level headed and they will want every penny of an award - if indeed they decide an award is to me made - justified. The lawyers won't tell you this of course because they make no money out of it. You don't need one because the whole thing is informal with very few of the convoluted rules of evidence that the legal parasites tie people up with.
I get great images from pon5.com for a dollar each and movies from shutterstock for ten dollars so the chance of an award of hundreds of pounds for the inadvertent use of a copyrighted image is remote.
As far as I'm aware there wasn't an actual decision by the court. The two sides came to an agreement and the court rubber-stamped that agreement. That means that no precedent was set.
Yeah it was an agreement.
I just emailed Picscout saying I don't want them using my bandwidth any more and would like full information on their useragent and how to block them from my sites - will see what they say...
They are up to a solicitor's letter now, wanting £1,600 instead of the original £800. They talk about how the courts like action to be taken to reach an 'amicable' agreement. Even if I was the company they are chasing (I'm not, they've just got my address from somewhere random) - I would call a doubling of the 'fee' between original letter and solicitor extortion.
I hope they do bring it to court - I think a judge would think likewise - and they'd still have to come up here to make their case, and that would cost them at least what they are trying to extort.
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