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

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Yoad

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Hello,

After today's events in my house I figured i'll share a little of experience I now have, so heres a word of advice when it comes to making a copyrighted site on the internet.

Today I have recived an ODD call from a guy who claims he is the spokeman of a company called photobank or something like that (I forgot what it was, I can check later if you wish.) he told me they will be sueing me for breaking the copyright laws for illegal usage of one of their copyrighted photo's.

Also he had added that if I wish to not go through the trial with a judge and all, I can just settle a deal of 2000$ with them and I will be granted the premittion to use that picture.

At first, of course, I was thinking "What the ****? This a joke, no judge will let you win a trial for 2000$+ because I was un-awarley using a copyrighted picture of you'rs!!" But then I understood the cold truth, most judges will, after reading a lot about this company, and her likes, they win almost daily in things like this and they usualy has a huge battery of lawyers, for example, they won a trial for 10,000$ because a small company used 7 of her pictures on her own site, and they had even bigger wins for over 50 and 60 thousand dollars.

Now to my side, did I know I used an illegal copy of a copyrighted picture? Nope, that picture was found on google and had NO Copyright mark on it.

Whats the point of all this post now you ask? The point is, this is a word of friendly warning, I am being forced to pay over 600$ (After we reached a settlment) just to not take this case infront of a judge and lose way more than 2000$ for breaking the copyright laws, the warning is fella's that if you are going to ever make a COPYRIGHTED site, a small site, a big site or even an industrial site... Shoot you'r own pictures, paint you'r own paintings, don't use google! Its not safe as its used to be any longer and one day you could wake up to the sound of a call of a photobank company that is intending to legally blackmail you, or even sue you.

Now here is something of my opinion that makes this even worse(remember its only my thoughts now), I believe this kinds of companys IMPLENT those pictures in sites that google and the likes of google easly tracks, to make people d/l them and use them for logo's or whatever, and then sue people they can trace that has fallen to this very sneaky, in a legal way, trap.

I'm sorry for the length, I hope you find this helpfull by any way.

Don't be sorry for me, because although I have written this as this has happend to me in person, it did not, however it did happen to a person which is highly related to me, but it does not matter this way or another.

Best of wishes,

-Jo.
 
If you search for an image on google, chances are it's copyrighted. The copyright doesn't have to be posted on the image at all - especially as you should be contacting the image owner before posting anything to begin with.

Shame on you for using someone else's images. Google image search was NEVER NEVER NEVER safe to use in this manner. All images have owners. If you don't know to contact the image owners before personal use, then you should not be running a website.


$600 is a bit steep (most places would simply request you remove the image, then bring up a lawsuit after the image is not taken down), but as I said it was your ignorance that caused it. Now you know for future use, but that does suck.


PS - This company is in no way blackmailing you... So, I don't see your comment about that being at all in relation to the situation at hand.
 
so how far does copyright go?

say if i wanted to post a pic on here, found it on google, and whack it in
 
to Eagleboy, in this case the picture was taken from a none-copyrighted site but it does not matter at all.

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?

and its not me who did it it was a person that is just related to me, i just write this post in order to tell the community of a possible event if THEY [by they, I mean other people that surfs around here] might fall into if they won't be careful like my friend.

to general, of course that in bottom line it is his fault and that is why he is being forced to pay, stating the obvius is stupid.

-Jo.

P.S.

This post is not an open discussion of whom's fault it is, its just a post to open peoples eyes of things that happens today that normal people won't even think about.
 
Yoad said:

to general, of course that in bottom line it is his fault and that is why he is being forced to pay, stating the obvius is stupid.

Is that even English?

Yoad said:
This post is not an open discussion of whom's fault it is, its just a post to open peoples eyes of things that happens today that normal people won't even think about.

I didn't know you were in charge of the off-topic section.
 
Is that even English?
Well his location says he's from Israel, so lets see how good your israeli is.

Anyway, yeah......I get the point of this post. It's the fact that people are greedy sons of beotches and they can't even talk things over anymore. Yes it may have been his fault in the first place, and technically they have all the rights in the world to just sue him, but seriously....what kind of freakin world are we livin in where someone can't make a mistake and simply be told of it.

A simple "Please remove from your site or we will be forced to take action" would suffice, but these people are obviously money hungry vultures.

Hmmm, maybe I should look into their business practices and start my own.
 
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.
 
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