I had a bit of a scare this morning when I received a letter from Getty Images saying they were going to charge me £900 for infringing copyright and using one of their images on our website. My offence was to download an image from one our clients websites and use it to help illustrate a case study. The person that had approved the case study on their behalf clearly didn't know the image was copyright protected.
Anyway, I've made some investigations and it appears Getty don't have a case because they need to give notice of the infringment and the opportunity to remove the image, which I have now done of course.
I'm now expecting a long exchange of letters with them. Wish me luck.
Alan Bullen
Lynx Networks plc
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2 comments:
I think you're wrong on this. Getty doesn't need to give you any notice to remove the image - the burden of checking copyright falls with the owner of the website, and ignorance isn't a defense. The photographer who planned, financed and took the shot, and Getty who on their behalf, distributes the image shouldn't be penalised by what's effectively theft of their content and intellectual property. There's no such thing as a free lunch nor free data cabling I'm guessing - nor should anyone assume that they can freely steal imagery for commercial use without paying licence fees...
Yes, I agree that images shouldn't be blatantly copied and Getty are right to give the problem a high profile. However, they should not intimidate people. I my case I believed the image was part of our client's logo so used it to illustrate their case study on our site. I'd be surprised if the page was viewed more than forty times in total and a lot of those would have been bots.
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