Getting 'sued' by Getty images...

JoeWed

JoeWed

JoeWed

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6 Jul 2008
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Hi All,

Since this is mainly a UK-based forum I was hoping this would be a good place to ask for UK-based legal advice.

Around this time last year a friend and I made a site for a local business, we're not a 'web design company' as such, but have done quite a few sites for local businesses (cheap, because the businesses are owned by various friends).

What usually happens is while designing the site we use preview stock photos from iStockPhoto or Getty just to get a general feel of what it's going to look like... and then when happy either buy the stock images or take our own similar photographs. This time however one 100x100 image we accidentally forgot to buy/re-take.

Yesterday we got a letter through from Getty images demanding £1000 for the use of the image (£900 if paid by the 10th October). We haven't had any past letters (i.e. a warning/c&d), noticing we were indeed still using that image I of course immediately took it down... but the letter states take-down is not sufficient.

In a similar situation what action would you guys take? Should we pay-up? £1000 is a hefty price for an honest mistake - especially since we only charged £400 for the whole website. Do we ignore it and hope they don't contact us again? I genuinely don't know what to do, I would have thought a supposedly legitimate company like getty images would at the very least send a warning/c&d letter first but I guess not.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I did search google which came up with a few people in similar situations but not really any solid advice on what course of action to take. Thanks in advance.
 
Try talking to them.
We did the same thing with iStock where we forgot to purchase one image out of many. We told them flat out that we always buy our images from them and a mistake was made this one time. They told us not to worry about it and let us off with a warning. They made certain to let us know that if it happened again, we would certainly be charged.
 
are you saying you used a pic and photoshopped the watermark? (the lines and the logo)? - surely they dont try and have a crack at you if you leave their stuff on the image?
 
SooTyLaD said:
are you saying you used a pic and photoshopped the watermark? (the lines and the logo)? - surely they dont try and have a crack at you if you leave their stuff on the image?
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Even with the watermark, it's still copyright violation. It's pretty harsh, but their whole business revolves around people paying them for the images they produce.
 
just thought i'd say that my mums friend got a letter asking for something similiar to what they have asked you for, for using there images without buying them. she never replied and didn't pay and hasn't had anything since and that was over a year ago iirc.

turned out that getty images are also found on many many many other websites that offer the images freely, e.g. http://www.sxc.hu, which she had got the image from, and that they just were sending out letters to anyone they could asknig for money. read online as you may find you can get out of it just like with her using a similiar reason.
 
take down the image and ignore - don't bother replying you'll only get more pressure from them.

As far as I'm aware no-one has been sued by getty, but loads have been blackmailed like they're trying to with you.

Ask yourself how much of the alleged £1000 will go to the original artist - answer: none. Some directors will get more of a bonus and all the cash will get rinsed into the getty coffers.
 
How do they know you have definitely sourced the image from there without paying under a completely different login/site.

Are you hotlinking from them!? :p
 
Shoseki said:
1) Send bill/threatening letter to unsuspecting business
2) Wait for ignorant/fearful to pay
3) PROFIT
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Cool, so when I sneak into a gym and start using their equipment I should be annoyed when they ask for money?

Unfortunately they are 100% in the right, it's their copywrite and their product. It's a standard practive for photographers and stock agencies, Getty is well known for it because it is such a massive stock agency who employ thousands of photographers as well as "freelancers". If you stole any of my images I upload on a stock site I would be rather peeved tbh, you just cost me a couple of hundred pounds!

(Yeah I know this thread is old, just watch out those of you that just use images from anywhere, don't be suprised if a bill is sent through for money from use of their photo/image on your website/leaflet etc.)

I'm fine with occasional use of my images on not for profit sites with a link back to my own but making money "from" the image is a different matter...
 
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Amp34 said:
you just cost me a couple of hundred pounds!
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not really. someone using your image doesn't cost you anything if they host it themselves, and if the person was looking for a free image to use it's highly unlikely that they'd have bought yours and instead just used someone elses, so you haven't lost out on any sales either.

it's wrong to steal etc but the argument that you've lost money is kind of silly imo. i remember reading an article recently that said those that steal films etc online are also the biggest spenders.

edit: sad how quick time goes by and how little my life has changed since i last wrote my post in this thread :(
 
Mammalian said:
not really. someone using your image doesn't cost you anything if they host it themselves, and if the person was looking for a free image to use it's highly unlikely that they'd have bought yours and instead just used someone elses, so you haven't lost out on any sales either.

it's wrong to steal etc but the argument that you've lost money is kind of silly imo. i remember reading an article recently that said those that steal films etc online are also the biggest spenders.

edit: sad how quick time goes by and how little my life has changed since i last wrote my post in this thread :(
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So every time someone pirates a computer game the developers don't lose money? They've written the software once, it's not like they have to keep writing a copy for every time that someone wants to purchase it is it?
 
AHarvey said:
So every time someone pirates a computer game the developers don't lose money? They've written the software once, it's not like they have to keep writing a copy for every time that someone wants to purchase it is it?
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if someone is looking for an image that cost them nothing, then no matter if they've used yours or not, you've not lost a sale as there was never going to be one for you as the user wanted an image that didn't cost them anything. i'm not saying it's correct, but i'm saying the sale was never there to lose, so you can't claim that each time someone uses your image you've lost £200
 
I'd have thought if you've bought a fair amount of images from them before you should be able to use that to justify that it was a one-off mistake.
 
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