The community speaks out about the copyright thugs

I received a lot of responses from the email I sent about the copyright thugs.

I’m printing them here, minus peoples names to protect their privacy with the exception of the last person who wrote a public article on this experience.

None of this constitutes legal advice. I am not a lawyer and I’m definitely not your lawyer and I’m not giving you any advice. I’m just reporting on what people have said.

I can’t provide any specific information on what to do once you’re in the trap. All I can do is repeat my common sense advice which is to scrub the photos on your site and make sure you haven’t inadvertently put something up that requires rights clearance that might expose you to these legal dirtb*gs.

The experiences the folks below are relating are their own and I’m not endorsing or not endorsing them.

Comments from the community

1. This sure isn’t new. Getty has an army of scumbags doing this, so I suppose others do, too. Getty came after me in 2010. I still have the entire email thread. They threatened. They offered to halve the penalty and to take payments over time. It was a well-rehearsed play. Google found me someone, I think he was also a lawyer, who explained my options. Your advice seems pretty close to what I remember his website advised. Eventually Getty stopped their effort.

2. Yes, this is real. It happened to me. The only reason I could extricate myself is because it was <redacted> with zero assets that would be sued. Which even the goons (aka legal pirates) know is a waste of their time. Smart post to send.

3. I’ve been hit a few times with this but never paid a dime. My website had discussion boards and blogs that other experts or users uploaded. If you have a DMCA-registered contact, they have to contact them and can get the image removed, but you have no liability because of Section 230. Works like a charm.

4. This happened to me. I had a site that I hosted for myself and 4 friends. One of the users put up an image that she got from Amazon of a magazine cover of Caitlyn Jenner that Annie Leibovitz photographed. A scumbag legal outfit does exactly what you described, scouring the internet for images of their clients, in this case Annie. The user was an Amazon affiliate and linked to that product, which all Amazon affiliates do to get a commission. I had to hire a copyright lawyer as Amazon wouldn’t help even though they acknowledged the user did nothing wrong. They sued for $150,000 and settled for $3000. Annie herself was involved but she has a firm do this for her. It was a photo of a magazine cover! So royalties had already gone to Annie. Lost all my respect for her. My copyright lawyer told me that the firm has a boiler room just like the old telemarketing rooms where all they do is run scans looking for any infractions. So it’s real and lucrative.

5. Hey Ken! Hope you’re well. Here’s an article I wrote about this topic back in 2012 based on my own experience: https://ryanhealy.com/getty-images-extortion-letter/

– Ken