checkmate06
Newbie
- Mar 15, 2011
- 26
- 7
Sorry about the loss. It's a real pain when losses of this nature are incurred. In most cases, copyright actions over images are just to make some money from people. The enforcement really depends on your place of residence. For anyone living outside the US like China, who gives a shit if any attorney is filing a suit for damages over images?
The courts ruled Google Images only stores the thumbnail of the picture, and the original pictures on Google Images are stored on 3rd party servers or other computers, therefore no copyright infringement has occured.
You could sue but you would probably lose just like Perfect 10 did when they sued Google for copyright infringement. The courts ruled Google Images only stores the thumbnail of the picture, and the original pictures on Google Images are stored on 3rd party servers or other computers, therefore no copyright infringement has occured.
The same argument could be used for embedding videos on websites. The actual video is stored on YouTube servers, and a website is displaying the video, but it is actually only a link to the video stored on the YouTube server. So you could get sued but you would have a strong Fair Use defense because the uploader has agreed to YouTube's Term's of Use which includes embedding videos. Any uploader can opt-out allowing their video to be embedded which would strengthen Fair Use claims. Of course, this argument assumes the uploaded video is not copyright infringed in the first place.
Wayback machine, google cache and so on..
I am more interested in regulations applying to international usage of images.
Let's say I am based in the Netherlands and I am using dutch hosting and I am hotlinking directly to an image instead of hosting it on my server.
I don't see how US based firms, claims, or C&D letters can touch me.
http://thepiratebay.org/legal
Boy, I wish I had read this thread earlier...
I have been creating a websites for many years, this one is for a "Ma and Pa" meat market.
One of the secondary pages has pics of beef, one being a steak on the grill 200px X 150px. The site is over two years old, ready for a update, actually, when 'bam' they get a nasty-gram from g.e.t.t.y images wanting $1800. I thought I had (as with all my site) taken a copy from a free image gallery, but of course I have no way of proving it now.
I removed the image immediately, but the owners are looking at me as to what to do. The formal snail-mail letter requests the money by the end of the month.
Damn, any advise here would really be appreciated. I admit I am not as thick skinned as perhaps others and I am trying to be professional as possible, but I am pretty scared over this kind of thing....
Thanks in advance!![]()
Yup, formal letter from Getty, not an email, including a screenshot of the secondary product page, with the "steak" pic (only 150px x 200px). The other was a "turkey" pic that I sent in an email broadcast for them last november, like a dope I didn't check the photo that was sent from the biz owner. They want $1800 by next week.
I have been doing websites for small biz owners since '94 (back before we got excited about animated gifs) and love helping the little guys, but know they are looking at me to solve this.
The same steak pic shows up 86 times with tineye, the turkey 137 times....I know I know, doesn't help, but I put the steak image on there over two years ago...
Any feedback would be great....thanks!
How can it be proven that after removing an image it was used at all? Logs are just text files, there is not tamper protection. Same with screenshots.
Well since this was a snail mail letter from their legal department (included all copyright legal jargon), I called and talked to a gal in accounting (Jeannette if anyone else has to deal with them) who had a scripted reply and they would go down 15%, but no payments accepted, full amount only because "they are not a credit company" and due this week...interesting and sucks big time![]()
Dont do it man. I really hope you dont plan on paying them. Im also certain they wont take you to court for this