Image Copyright Infringement Information if Threatened by Litigation

I am in Singapore and run a small company developing software. I enganged a company in India to develop our website (static site with 5-6 pages) at the cost of $1,500. I assumed that they would use legitimate pictures and images as their invoice had indicated – pictures included.

Three years later I get a letter from an image stock company demanding payment of over $ 5000 for using their pictures. As there came a doubt about the legitimacy of the images, we removed them from our website immediately, pending our confirmation from the Indian vendor.

Obviously I was shocked and, in my bewilderment, protested my innocence. I had no idea where the vendor had picked up the images from and referred them to the vendor.

If my vendor had told me the cost of the images, I would reject them outright in the first place, anyway.

They asked me to settle the matter with my vendor and continued demanding payment of over $ 5000 – this was more than the cost of the website development.

I find their demand unreasonable and unfair. If the images are protected and for sale, why not have a watermark on the “Sample” and send the actual image to the buyer upon purchase. It looks like an entrapment tactic.

And get this – the vendor that did the website has closed down. I am still protesting and do not find any justification that I should pay.

My question is this – would the law compel you to pay for something that you did not want to pay for in the first place?

Naturally, when you engage a vendor to do something, the presumption is that he will use legitimate materials. You would not want to insult every vendor by asking them about the legitimacy of their business model.

If you engage somebody do design a bedroom wardrobe and he copies the design, who is liable? Do you demolish your wardrobe for this reason ?

I trust that the laws are written in the spirit of justice.

This is because even though photographers have copyright protection from the moment they shoot the protection is often useless with regards to getting infringement damages paid, if the image was not registered prior to the infringement!

This is outrageuous. It goes to show that we have too many lawyers, judges and politicians in this country, and there is an unholy alliance between them. The honest ones need to step forward and expose and stop the abuse by the bad apples, or the people will lose all respect and they will be the biggest losers.

Thank you for posting this. Another example of the courts running amok:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134571

“Jury orders music swapper to pay $1.92M” (for swapping 24 songs…)

I was extremely spooked with the persistance of the company and after 8+ hrs. of research, decided they did have grounds for litigation. A lot then had to do with the ‘registration’ and I’m still unclear whether or not the images were registered by this super stock company. I played hard ball and gave the attorney a letter of hardship (which was true) and they did settle quickly on a $750 flat fee to avoid future troubles and fines. Better than the $13,000 they were after me for and a lesson I’ll never forget. I now have a Nikon D90 and make sure to follow the rules/laws of copyright. What I couldn’t believe is the fact of removing it not being enough, the fact of ‘tracking photos’ for given months/years plus the fact of departments that survive on going after their images for LARGE sums.

I downloaded an image off of the google image, and it was titled “copy”, and it did not have a trace to the website or copyright owner and it was not on the image. I had this image as a small thumbnail on my site and I had put in a title through Adobe.

I did not even remember having this website because I was billed automatically monthly and I have around 3-4 websites. I had it registered for 2 years, but did not put the photo on it until about a year ago.

I was notified by the “owner” of the photo and when I actually looked at his photo it did not look like the one he had used and I questioned him. He assured me it was from his website out of his “stock.” The title to the photo is not the same as the “stock” photo he had and it doesn’t look clear as his. This photo looks similar to his. I don’t know who made the copy, but I did try to find it from google and since I did not, I used it. I can’t find the photo I found on google anymore when I recently tried to find out who originally copied it. It wasn’t me.
Now I got a threatening email, not physical mail letter, from the photographer and I just pulled the website completely. I did not even need this site. Unfortunately, I didn’t pull it soon enough.
This website was not for marketing, it was for information only for people to write in about Access TV shows. Access TV is not ‘COMMERCIAL.”. No goods were advertised on this site and it was a one pager, no frills yahoo site. I think probably 10 people ever viewed it. Don’t know. No one wrote to me from that site at all.
So, the photographer said we could settle, and he wouldn’t sue for $150,000.00 like his lawyer would like him to if I would pay his price. His price is $3,850.00 he says that was generated from a software program that computes all the data to arrive at a price. He is also giving me 20 days to pay this.
My company is an LLC, and we have $28.00 in the account right now. No employees, it is a home based business. Like you, I have zip.
His photo that he says I used, and I say I did not know it was his because of the google thing, is copyrighted and registered through the library of Congress.
I talked to him personally on the phone and told him I did not mean to use a photo that was copyrighted, but there was no information on the photo I got.
He wants’ me to accept his invoice that states on it in a paragraph that this payment of $3,850.00 is for retroactive payment of the use of his photo, and that if paid by July 24, 2008 there will not be a law suit $150,000.00.
I looked at his copyright document and he copyrighted it through the library 12-2003. Original photo was in 1994, so if he posted it on his web and someone else was able to copy it, that is possible and it does not have copyright mark on it, (the copy I found) which is entitled “copy.”
Anyway, I do not have and cannot get $3,850.00 in 20 days and think it is very unreasonable.
Your comments are welcome. I have to write a similar letter. If he sues, he will not get anything because there is nothing owned by my company. Nothing, not even office equipment, etc.
Thanks for your time. Anyah D.