Getty Images Copyright Demand Letters

My associate received a letter from Getty Images today demanding $3600.00 for 3 images they claim they own copyright for.

Wonder if anyone else has received such a demand and how have they treated it...

While I respect copyrights, I am alarmed at a company being able to demand an arbitrary fine and threatening legal action.

(Apparently the "offending" images were used of a compilation CD of royalty free images that were several years old.)

Just curious....



Need more info

It's not unusual if the images were used in a way not permitted.

How exactly were these images used? Did your associate use them in a design of a printed piece? Were they simply included on a CD which was distributed? Did your associate purchase these images directly from Getty? If so, are you sure they all came on a CD collection purchased from Getty? If they were "Rights Managed" and not "Royalty Free," then there could be a problem.

What did Getty say is the problem, exactly?

It's difficult to tell what the situation is without knowing all the facts.





More.....

Getty has fined him 3600.00 for 3 images used on his site. Image bots must have scanned his site as the images were not watermarked and file names were changed when the site was built.

The 3 images were part of an image compilation CD from the 90's and was not a Getty product, he paid 20.00 or so for the CD of images. In fact there were 20 images used on his site taken from the same CD yet Getty found just 3 they state were in violation of their copyright.

I Googled this last night and there seem to be hundreds of these letters being sent around the world over the past couple of years.





I would say he should contact Getty

Discuss the matter, and explain that he purchased the CD. Hopefully, he still has a receipt for the purchase. However, I must say that $20 for a CD full of royalty free images sounds awfully odd. Even 10 years ago, most CDs cost $100 or so.





Getty demand letters

My wife received a letter from Getty demanding $11,600 for 12 photos her site designer used also from a royalty free CD purchased at a trade fair in 1998. Unfortunately the disks and receipt were lost in Hurricane Katrina. Do you know the name of the company that was selling those disks? The photos were from the Image Bank, Stone and Taxi collections.
Thanks,





Just a guess

could it have been PhotoDisc?





PhotoDisc

Good guess. Apparently it was a sample disc probably also including photos from Artville and Stockbyte. All those companies were acquired by Getty between 1998 and 2006 and apparently a lot of photos were changed from royalty free to arts managed status. I sure would love to turn up one of those disks.

Thanks for your help.





Don't bother looking for them...

Sample discs are just that. Samples. No rights to actually use the images on those discs were given or implied. They were basically for "comp" purposes only.



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