FYI, you should do a bit of digging on the web before even considering paying what they want. Getty is notorious for legal bullying and to my knowledge have never followed through on their legal threats.
FYI, you should do a bit of digging on the web before even considering paying what they want. Getty is notorious for legal bullying and to my knowledge have never followed through on their legal threats.
Originally Posted by IAMB
Hi IAMB:
Well I'm here to tell you that Getty most certainly does follow through on it's threats. Yes they do bully and in my opinion use rather underhanded tactics to accomplish their goal,, BUT THEY DO PROCEED TO COURT!!! Five years ago I had a new website http://www.northernguideservices.com/index.html designed and built by a nationally know company. It was a successful project that defiantly increased my market share for my business in my area. While it was being built I was pretty active in choosing photos for the site from ones that this company supplied me with. We were told that all of the photos had been taken care of by the building company, and they did as far as we all knew at that time. However it got lost in the translation or fine print or what ever that the ones that were from Getty were only paid for a usage for very limited usage time from the time of when use started. Within one week from the 1yr. anniversary date we received a letter from Getty stating that we owed them $16,000. It went on to say because we were the end user we were the party that was responsible for paying Getty. They also said we had to take down all the pictures or we would need to be paying additional amounts anally for the privilege of using their photos. Needless to say we didn't have the money, we told Getty that and they basically said your tough luck pay us the money or we will sue you for it. Well I was in a wonderful humor after that correspondence so I called the build company told them the situation and basically assured them that if I got sued that I was coming after them for way more money, and that they had better replace the photos from Getty with ones that were of equal value and impact on the perspective clients. When the build company balked a bit about having to redo all of this work for nothing I gave them one chance to make all things right or they would regret their decision. The bottom line was I can be a real Pr*ck if someone wants to cross me, which I let them know in no uncertain terms. Just ask anyone that knows me. They did the rebuild for nothing and it came out great. Every bit as good as the original if not better.
Fast forwarding a smidgen and the build company dragged their feet on negotiating with Getty on our behalf. That was when we got notice that Getty was in fact pushing forward with a suit against us and we did end up in court. I with my attorney, Getty's attorney and the build companies attorney. Things went on for two days in court before the judge encouraged all of the involved parties to try to come to agreement and settle out of court. A week later the final compromise was reached buy all three parties. It broke down that the build firm would pay Getty $4000.00, 25% of what they were asking for the use of the pictures and court and legal fees for all. They really had no choice since if Getty was successful against me I would pile it on to them a lot heavier than what I got.
As far as your situation the good news is that from my experience Getty can be brought to the bargaining table to secure a lesser payment. Which I had and still suspect it their intended goal to begin with, with us and I would suspect is what they use for a strategy on a regular basis.
So don't ever let anyone tell you not to take potential legal threats about copyright infringement seriously. Because in fact they do happen!!! Best of luck with it all.
Godspeed
Wayne
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"]Thanks for taking your time to write a
reply everybody. We will see what happens as Getty is pursuing the
party rental company for payment because they have more money. I
agree with the fact that I think Getty Images is pursuing this simple
road sign image a little to far, but if your a money grubber that's
what you do. I think that they are just trying to serve as the NAZI
organization of imagery where they want to own the rights to
everything image related. I know a few specific photographers that
cover high profile sports and events from around the US that think
Getty's is killing the photographer market. These freelance
photographers make all their money buy selling their images to
different magazines and new organizations where Getty images has such
a vast resource of photographers willing to turn over their images
for nothing that its making it hard for these guys to compete with
travel expenses added. It kind of sounds like the Walmart fiasco even
though I like shopping at walmart for the most part. The fact is five
years ago I did not have a grasp on all the different areas of
photography matters as I do now. As far as ever doing this again, I
will make sure to only submit my photography no matter how
insignificant I think an image may be.
Try not to get too emotional about it. Yes, $600 for a thumbnail isextortion, but $600 won't get you far if you need to hire a lawyer to fight them. Maybe 3 hours.
Wayne is pretty much right on that. It's sad that you can have companies that pirate movies,ect, and majorCorps. can't win in court to close them, but an innocentmistake like this and they are trying to rape ya.
Words get in the way of what I meant to say.
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