Going to make a copyrighted site anytime soon? Read this.

[Eagleboy]

By blackmailing i mean that they give you no warning that it is copyrighted in request to take it off, they immediantly ask you for money (price depends on the amount, for one picture they would ask for 2k $ minimum, here my mate just reached a settlment with the company for 600$ but there WAS NO WARNING from them that it is copyrighted and that we should take it off!), get it now?

That's not blackmailing. Either way, it's bad business practices, and I'm sure if you found a good lawyer you could get a judge to take the fines down...

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Yoad, did you talk to this person yourself?
In my opinion, you should have given him your email address and asked him to contact you through this. Then forwarded him the name of a your lawyer. Often times, companies try to do this to scare people. These cases don't just go to court the week after it happens. It's a civil suit that could take a couple of years to finally get to court.

In a return effort, offering to remove the image immediately and playing the "I'm a kid and didn't know any better" is a good move. But, to talk and talk and talk to these people is dangerous. They can't just call you up on the phone and blabber about settling out of court.
If they DON'T fall for the innocent kid approach, then be firm and state..."Look, I didn't know that the image was subject to copyright and didn't mean any harm"..."I'll take the image down IMMEDITATLY and I apologize". If they drag it any further tell them politely to submit an Injunction and Force to Pay through the PROPER channels. They HAVE to submit a case to court first before calling you and asking for money. Sometimes they will back down if it's not worth the time to them. 1 picture is not worth anything really. Also, it might be wise to add Privacy to your domain name. Sounds like all they did was run a search on hits and found your domain....then just ran a /whois on your domain and found your phone number.

This is much better than giving them the money. It isnt worth their time, this is a big scare tatic. And something like this wouldnt do well in court.

I got in trouble for copywrighted images on my server a while ago as well...

 

[uzi9mm]

say fine.... take me to court.

but in the mean time take the image down.....

 

[Yoad]

the whole site was taken off when they called, it was a dead one anyway we just left it going for the heck if it cause we use the email servers this way or another so we can't sell the domains / servers lol.


to mike, I have thought the same thing, but i've read more than 4 articles that shows the absolute opposite, the law system back those people up in every way possible, those company's won over 90% of the cases in court. and it might not be a civile suit since we're talking about breaking the copyright laws (Even though it was unawarely and we took off the picture immediantly), thus for 600$ I dont think its a good idea to even take the chance to lose a lot more :S

I just wanted to warn peoples that this kind of stuff is being done, and I don't mean suits for breaking copyrights by copying materials, I mean suits for doing simple things like using some picture you found on google in its picture search (And don't tell me everyone knows that its not safe, a lot of site makers use couple of pictures from google to make a logo here and there, they just take the none-copyrighted pictures from dead sites or un-copyrighted sites).

I hope you get the whole point here lol, thanks for the advices though mike you'r a good fella

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To general, I know you like being an idiot and try to start a flame with me in every post I am.
I also realize it IS hard for you to comprehend clean english, so let me clarify once more what I have said earlier to you, It's totaly stupid to STATE THE OBVIUS, my friend, the one who is being forced to pay, is only being forced to pay because that in bottom line it IS his fault, so what was the point of you'r post saying "you'r fault"? lol...

And also, no, I don't run the off-topic here, I do believe however that I have the premittion to run MY OWN threads unless they are illegal ones.

So if don't like my posts, don't reply to them instead of just spamming.

-Jo

 

[AnthraX]

That sucks what happend. I hate people that just wait for something to happen so they can sue someone and get money.

That's not blackmailing. Either way, it's bad business practices, and I'm sure if you found a good lawyer you could get a judge to take the fines down...

You're right. It's not blackmail. It IS, however, extortion. Which is, at least in the USA, illegal.

 

[GameGURU]

Go to stock photo websites. They always have great pics, for free. Most of them you just have to send the picture taker an email saying you'll be using it. Also, a lot of the pictures you can do whatever you want with and not even send an email to the taker.

 

[Yoad]

^Thats the whole idea of my thread, warn people since I know a lot use google to dig up some pictures to create logos for their sites and stuff, don't use public pictures ! Theres pricks sitting behind monitors 24/7 just waiting to dig a site up with their copyrighted picture to sue you! And they will.

 

[Trifid]

*Does a cleanup of my site. I would like to know wether it is legal to grab a image off of google, host it else where and then link it? Or hotlink it? - would have thought this was worse...

 

[Yoad]

Its equally illegal, however the hole in that rule is that to defend the users from being wrongly suied they should have added a part saying that first a warning to remove the object should be sent first, if nothing happens then a suit should follow the warning, sadly there is no side-regulation for that rule, and they can sue you at any time if they find anything on you'r site/server... sad isn't it?

 

[Eagleboy]

Go to stock photo websites. They always have great pics, for free. Most of them you just have to send the picture taker an email saying you'll be using it. Also, a lot of the pictures you can do whatever you want with and not even send an email to the taker.

Most stock photo websites exist for profit for both the service and the photographer.

As a photographer, I urge people to buy images. The photographer spent some **** good time taking the image and editing it in post - the least you could do is front up a couple bucks to throw the guy a bone...