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.
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.