Image Copyrights

monkey_boy · 27 Apr 2009 at 21:35

Hi all,

A situation came up today where we recieved a bill from Getty Images for copyright infringement. It seems that former web developer used images from the internet to mark different sections of a website for us. Susequently, Getty Images have seen these images on our website and have sent us a bill for #800 per image.

Now, I know that copyright is important and should be enforced. I know that I would want to enforce it, if it ever came to be an issue to me. However, we've made contact with the web developer, who has since moved on to another job and they maintain that they 'always kept copyright in mind' and sourced the images from websites that they 'thought' were copyright free.

I know that the web guys ought to have a system in place to request and keep a record of copyright requests, but this isn't in place at the moment.

So what I was wondering is a) has anyone been on the recieving end of this b) is there any substance to their claims and c)what course of action would you take now?

It's also worth bearing in mind that we are a non-profit organisation, the images were thumbnail/icon size and weren't used on anything that generates any revenue at all.

Nirvana · 27 Apr 2009 at 21:47

We received the exact same email at work about 2 months ago. They really have Eagle eyes those Getty scouts! We created a photo gallery web template which we released for free download (totally non-profit) and used images from the Mac OSX Wallpaper collection as the sample images. Turns out these are Getty registered and they wanted, as you say £800 per image we used.

We were totally unaware! So we replaced the images in the template and sent an apology to Getty (informing them that these images are distributed as part of the operating system with no clear documentation).... They ended up pardoning us but made us acutely aware that if we wanted to use their images, there is a cost involved.

I've heard of this happening several times and they seem to be fairly understanding providing you're not blatantly ripping them off which you're not.

Good luck!

daz · 27 Apr 2009 at 22:24

Remove the image and ignore any correspondence from them.

Ross1234 · 27 Apr 2009 at 22:26

daz said:
Remove the image and ignore any correspondence from them.

I have heard stories of that not working in the past with getty images.

daz · 27 Apr 2009 at 22:29

Ross1234 said:
I have heard stories of that not working in the past with getty images.

In what sense?

If they want to take you to court it will be at their expense since it will be in the small claims court. The worst case scenario is that you have to pay the invoice (you're ordered to pay the disputed invoice by the court).

unwashed potato! · 27 Apr 2009 at 22:44

if you can prove that another site also sells the images or somewhere you could get them for free, then getty images have no case i would have thought.

use googles new similiar images to try and find the same image else where. i have known 3 people this has happened to and they know 100% that they didn't get the images from getty images. they ignored and nothing has happened.

http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/

PaulM · 27 Apr 2009 at 22:51

Had the same about 8 months ago, they wanted £1200 for a 100x100 image we accidentally left on a design, for a tiny site that gets about 10 hits a day - we charged less than that to build the entire site.

Quickly replaced the image, ignored the letter and so far they haven't contacted us again (yet?).

I think they just send out as many as possible in and a small percentage of people will just pay straight away so it makes it worth their effort, I doubt they would actually follow up any of their claims if you remove the image though.