Unintended Consequences

Every photographer detests copyright infringers. When one of their images is used without compensation they want to be paid not only their normal fee for the use but a reasonable amount for chasing down the infringer and enough penalty to insure that the infringer won’t do it again. The goal is to give everyone incentive to be honest.

PicScout has developed a lucrative business of locating image uses on the Internet and assisting distributors and image creators in identifying those that are unauthorized. PicScout says that 85% of the uses they find are unauthorized. Last year there was one report that Getty Images handles about 35,000 unauthorized use claims a year, but they will not confirm that number.

But chasing after these infringers may have unintended consequences.



I regularly receive calls from image users who have received demand letters from Getty Images and want advice as to what to do. Of course, all I can tell them is to pay what is asked, but let me describe a couple situations.

Health Spa operator in Houston



A health spa operator in Houston contacted me. She had received a letter from Getty demanding $2,000 for the use of 2 physical fitness images on her web site. About a year earlier she had hired a web designer to build a site for her. The designer had chosen the images to be used and submitted a bill for the overall design. The woman assumed that what she paid covered all costs and cleared any copyright that was required. She was never told anything different by the designer.

While the designer was at fault, it is the spa operator who is now obligated to pay the bill. The designer has gone out of business and the spa operator suspects she will have a difficult time collecting anything from the designer.

She has contacted Getty to see if a more reasonable settlement could be negotiated, but the people she talked to were unmoved and said she would have to pay the entire bill or they would sue. One picture was used on the home page and the other was used on a secondary page. In checking pricing on the Getty web site for a Stone+ images Getty would charged $1,045 for the home page image and $700 for the other one so a $2,000 fee isn’t that out of line.



The health spa operator acknowledges that she has made a mistake in choosing the designer she hired, but hers is a small business and playing this fee is going to be very painful. She removed the images as soon as she received the letter from Getty.

The really sad part of the whole thing is that if her web designer had been smart enough to go iStockphoto instead of Getty she could have got two perfectly satisfactory images for her purposes for under $10 each.

So what do you think this customer has learned? (1) If she ever needs images again she will make sure that the images are purchased from a low cost source. (2) Once, she has contacted the designer, presumably the designer will also have sense enough to use a low cost sources for any future photo needs. (3) They will both tell their friends about their experience.

Cake Decorating

A Getty photographer in the UK received this letter from someone who had used some of his photos on a hobbyist web site.

“You probably don't know me, and to be honest, you don't need too. I live in another country and operate a hobbyist site for cake decorating. A few years ago I did a story on my site about divorce cakes and how funny they were. I collected photos off the internet and showed them to my visitors, never intending to earn money from this act, but just sharing thoughts. I found the photos on different sites and none of them were watermarked or meta tagged in any way that would enable me to know that they were Getty Images photos.”

This photographer’s photos were among the ones used and Getty was demanding $20,000 for the unauthorized use.

The letter writer said, “I guess you get these letters every day. So here goes, another life ruined without any intent to do anything wrong. Needless to say, I don't have that kind of money, and I will probably sell my soul to obtain a release from this thing.”

Extortion Letter

There are enough of these infringements that attorney Oscar Michelen has developed a business to assist infringers. His web site is http://extortionletterinfo.com/. He provides some draft responses to The Getty Images Settlement Demand Letter and calls Getty’s letters “Legalized Extortion.”  He also provides information on settlement demand letters from Corbis, Masterfile, Superstock and George P. Riddick/Imageline.

So What?

What is all this activity likely to accomplish? Is it going to be easy to collect this money? How much will be spent in legal or administrative fees to make these collections? And most important of all, are these people likely to turn into Getty Images customers and buy more images in the future?

We certainly, don’t want to tell people that they can use any image they want, anytime they want without compensating the creator. And we might as well try to get as much as we can for unauthorized uses. But, if these actions are building business for anyone it is probably the microstock distributors. And after all the administrative and legal fees are paid the image creators are probably receiving very little benefit.