Getting 'sued' by Getty images...

Amp34 · 19 May 2010 at 01:12

Mammalian said:
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

Perhaps, but they have still used the image, if they wanted it free then choose another image....

Personally if it was the situation in the OP then (if they had bought a lot of images from Getty) I would appear like an honest mistake and should be cancelled with the payment of the fee the image cost should have been.

Pottsey · 19 May 2010 at 09:00

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? “
In many cases that is correct. Sometimes someone pirating a game is not losing the developers any money. Sometimes pirating the game can create more money for the developers. But of course sometimes pirating is losing the developers money.

But it is not a case of every single stolen imagine or pirated game is a loss of money.

gord · 19 May 2010 at 09:18

Tripnologist said:
Well, if you've paid for an image, you're hardly likely to be using the lower quality, watermarked preview image are you?

Precisely, so if they are using temp images with the watermarks intact, which has allowed Getty to be sure it's their image, then in reality they are just advertising their service.

I would be surprised to receive a £1000 bill for a watermarked low-res usage. Maybe a slap on the wrist and take it down, but it's not like they are trying to deceive. That's why I wanted to find out more about the exact usage.

Tripnologist · 19 May 2010 at 10:12

gord said:
Precisely, so if they are using temp images with the watermarks intact, which has allowed Getty to be sure it's their image, then in reality they are just advertising their service.

I would be surprised to receive a £1000 bill for a watermarked low-res usage. Maybe a slap on the wrist and take it down, but it's not like they are trying to deceive. That's why I wanted to find out more about the exact usage.

Well, the first reply to this thread, back in 2008 as from me. We got caught out using one image we didn't pay for. What had happened was we'd just quickly clone out the watermarks so it'd look better to the client and then we'd purchase the images once everything was signed off.

Even without the watermark, their software still found the image so we received a letter telling us we owed them x amount of money.

The only reason they let us off was because every other stock image on the site was from them and they were all paid for which kind of proved that it was an honest mistake.

(since then, we leave the watermarks on so it'll never happen again)

As for not just giving a slap on the wrist and a take down, I can understand why they go with such a large penalty.
It costs them money to actively search for people using images without paying and also to deal with those people. While the large fee covers that, most importantly, the few people who pay the fee make up for the ones who don't.

Amp34 · 19 May 2010 at 12:08

A good ending then.

I agree it was a bit steep, but i guess it is their image so they could try and charge what they like. A more standard price for an image of that size billed after usage would probably be around £100.

gord · 19 May 2010 at 12:16

Tripnologist said:
their software still found the image

How does that even work?

When you cloned out the watermarks etc did you leave all of the exif and meta data intact? They may be able to use a robot to trawl for their images, but even then people are allowed to change the photo's size etc so cross reffing them for file size wouldnt work. This would be a massive operation too, I mean Google scale to be done effectively.

I'm struggling to see how they can know 100% you haven't bought it, especially under a different name/employee etc..

Tripnologist · 20 May 2010 at 12:11

Could have been the meta data. We had no intention of not paying for any of the images so didn't bother with any of that.

I know you can also hide data in images, so maybe they've done that. I don't know, nor really care. However they do it, it was enough to find a single image with the watermarks cloned out.

edscdk · 20 May 2010 at 12:17

change the image say you never knew it was theirs, say you got it off a CD of free images you brought on ebay years ago?

robmiller · 20 May 2010 at 13:35

gord said:
How does that even work?

When you cloned out the watermarks etc did you leave all of the exif and meta data intact? They may be able to use a robot to trawl for their images, but even then people are allowed to change the photo's size etc so cross reffing them for file size wouldnt work. This would be a massive operation too, I mean Google scale to be done effectively.

Not really, there's loads of software to do it, including the publicly available and free TinEye. It can detect images even after cropping, resizing, desaturating, reprocessing etc.

Energize · 21 May 2010 at 20:54

I can't believe Getty would even consider sending a letter out like that, such bad business practice, what sane company would risk losing all that future custom over an accidental 100x100 image? :confused:

Business 101, suing your own customers is not a good idea...

simisker · 21 May 2010 at 21:31

Energize said:
I can't believe Getty would even consider sending a letter out like that, such bad business practice, what sane company would risk losing all that future custom over an accidental 100x100 image?

Business 101, suing your own customers is not a good idea...

To be fair, I think Getty realised this, so have since adopted a different two-part strategy to coax money from their users:

1. Buy up iStockphoto.
2. Increase the cost of iStock credits every three months while increasing the amount of credits per photo every two months*.

* frequency exaggerated slightly for dry, sardonic effect.

Amp34 · 24 May 2010 at 12:17

Energize said:
I can't believe Getty would even consider sending a letter out like that, such bad business practice, what sane company would risk losing all that future custom over an accidental 100x100 image?

Business 101, suing your own customers is not a good idea...

Because they are a large company that get stolen from constantly. Most of Gettys customers (that pay) will be newspapers and large advertising companies, who will have standing accounts. Relatively little money will come from the small independent people, the sort of people who will be more likely to be "stung" by the bills sent out.

If I had any photos on Getty (I don't yet, I use other stock sites) I'd be quite happy (ish) with the way they do it, means I can get paid if someone has ripped off my image.

gord · 24 May 2010 at 12:53

robmiller said:
Not really, there's loads of software to do it, including the publicly available and free TinEye. It can detect images even after cropping, resizing, desaturating, reprocessing etc.

Interesting. But it still doesn't solve the issue of non-exclusive images. For instance, we buy images from iStock, but I have seen the same images on Google and other stock sites.

How can 1 stock site send out a letter regarding the use of an image it thinks has been taken from its own site unless it knows 100% it has exclusivity and/or its theirs via meta data/watermark.

robmiller · 24 May 2010 at 13:50

gord said:
Interesting. But it still doesn't solve the issue of non-exclusive images. For instance, we buy images from iStock, but I have seen the same images on Google and other stock sites.

How can 1 stock site send out a letter regarding the use of an image it thinks has been taken from its own site unless it knows 100% it has exclusivity and/or its theirs via meta data/watermark.

It probably just does it for images for which it has exclusivity.

robmiller · 24 May 2010 at 14:15

Energize said:
I can't believe Getty would even consider sending a letter out like that, such bad business practice, what sane company would risk losing all that future custom over an accidental 100x100 image?

Business 101, suing your own customers is not a good idea...

I bet 99% of the people that are stealing their images aren't actually customers otherwise, though, and so there's no revenue stream to endanger (and a potential one to create, if you manage to get even a small proportion of them to pay for what they've taken).

Amp34 · 24 May 2010 at 16:05

robmiller said:
It probably just does it for images for which it has exclusivity.

Probably, also isn't there software out ther that digitally watermarks images, mean the program alters a few pixels (indistinguishable to the naked eye) and all you need to do is stick the image in the program and it will tell you if it is from your site instantly. I'm guessing Getty have a similar program that just samples the net and analyses images it comes across for the digital watermark. That means, unless you manage to alter that area of the shot there is no way of hiding it, making it smaller, removing exif and cloning out watermarks won't help.

EDIT: Digimark are who I wa thinking about https://www.digimarc.com/solutions/dwm.asp

Energize · 24 May 2010 at 17:06

robmiller said:
I bet 99% of the people that are stealing their images aren't actually customers otherwise, though, and so there's no revenue stream to endanger (and a potential one to create, if you manage to get even a small proportion of them to pay for what they've taken).

I was referring to the fact that they had sent one to an actual customer.

It creates a bad reputation for the company and results in large businesses not wanting to use their services in case of these errors.

Amp34 said:
That means, unless you manage to alter that area of the shot there is no way of hiding it, making it smaller, removing exif and cloning out watermarks won't help.

You mean like saving in a lossy format?

Amp34 · 25 May 2010 at 11:38

Hmmm, interesting point. I have no idea!

unwashed potato! · 25 May 2010 at 16:24

Amp34 said:
Probably, also isn't there software out ther that digitally watermarks images, mean the program alters a few pixels (indistinguishable to the naked eye) and all you need to do is stick the image in the program and it will tell you if it is from your site instantly. I'm guessing Getty have a similar program that just samples the net and analyses images it comes across for the digital watermark. That means, unless you manage to alter that area of the shot there is no way of hiding it, making it smaller, removing exif and cloning out watermarks won't help.

EDIT: Digimark are who I wa thinking about https://www.digimarc.com/solutions/dwm.asp

as far as i was aware this is what they did, but still this has the big problem that the image can still be downloaded from somewhere else. say i steal the image from getty, then upload it to a free to download image site, another user then visits the free site and uses the image. you can't expect a user to go searching on all image websites to make sure it's not been stolen.

SimonR · 25 May 2010 at 17:53

Business 101 Advanced - Not billing for your work is a guaranteed failed business!

Mushii