Graphics Detective (GD) in Belgium has developed a strategy for chasing online infringements that photographers may want to check out. There is no cost to the photographer unless there is a settlement. In the event of a settlement Graphics Detective pays the photographer 50% of whatever it collects.
The key to their success is that when they find an infringement they don’t go after the “big bucks.” Rather a lawyer sends a letter requesting a reasonable fee of between 150 € ($167.53) and 250 € ($279.20) for the unauthorized use. They charge the lowest fees for political, governmental, schools and social uses. They have found that a high percentage of users pay these fees without much complaint rather than risk further legal action.
The first step for a photographer is to send GD a digital file of the images in the photographer’s online collections that might have been infringed. An image file that is around 400 pixels on the longest side is perfectly satisfactory for their purposes. The photographer may also leave the metadata or IPTC details in the image file, but that is not necessary.
GD searches the web for uses of the images submitted. When they find one they notify the photographer and provide a screen grab of the site where the image was found and additional information about the owner of the site. The photographer is asked to review this information and indicate whether the image was legally licensed, or not. This is all the photographer has to do. Once the photographer has identified images that were not licensed GD goes through the list to determine if the uses were commercial or social, and begins sending out letters to the site owner.
GD says that their system is designed so image owners can easily go through a list of about 100 images in an hour and identify those that are infringements.
For some photographers whose images are available through agencies this review process may be the Achilles heel in the system. Often the photographer doesn’t know the name of customer was who licensed use of their image. Getting that information out of their stock agency can be very difficult. On the other hand, if the image has never been licensed then it is a safe bet it is an unauthorized use.
GD wants to protect the photographer’s reputation. Their in-house legal experts try to keep the settlement requests as reasonable as possible so they are not perceived as “legal extortion,” but as fair compensation to the photographer.
They have found that on average for every Internet search of 1,000 images in a three-month period they find between 5 and 10 unauthorized uses. Once they have scanned an image they will continue to search the Internet on a regular basis for other uses.
In one of their biggest success stories they scanned 5,000 images belonging to one individual. In a three-month period, they identified 352 websites with illegal use of this group of images. Letters were sent to the website owners and 60% paid a fee. (In a few cases the fee was negotiated.) The total collected from these 211 uses was 55,000 €. That works out to $30,731 for the photographer. And those images will probably generate more infringements in the years ahead.