Received C&D today demanding removal and payment

Svoboda

Svoboda

Active member
Long story short, receive a lawsuit draft today demanding that I remove a picture (which I have) that a member posted in a thread on one of my forums as well as payment for use of said picture. This is the first time I've received a C&D that also demanded payment. Do I have any recourse at all especially since a member posted said photo?
 
I've been threatened by Getty Images and Ferrari before. I think you need to respond and say that the image will be removed and that the site is driven by public user content and is not necessarily owned by you. I think they just want it removed and will not pursue the fines. Every company is different though.
 
Audentio said:
I've been threatened by Getty Images and Ferrari before. I think you need to respond and say that the image will be removed and that the site is driven by public user content and is not necessarily owned by you. I think they just want it removed and will not pursue the fines. Every company is different though.
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Yeah, I already removed it. I will give this a try.
 
To be fully protected in the U.S., you need to register your site(s) with DMCA and post a DMCA policy on each covered site. It's less of a worry given that RightHaven has had a stake through its heart for the last year, but DMCA registration is still a cheap insurance policy.

Also take note of the judgment for slander in favor of Sarah Jones this week. Her first trial ended in a hung jury; she won almost a $400K judgment in the second trial. Admittedly this is an extreme case of sleaze, but blaming his posters did not work out well for the respondent, even with EFF on his side.
 
Moshe1010 said:
I've been there. These are trolls and they do nothing - just remove the picture and that's it:
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/
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I did a little more than that
Code: 
-A INPUT -s 193.32.20.88/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 62.75.220.25/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 72.26.192.0/19 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 82.80.249.150/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 66.147.242.156/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 72.26.211.146/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 204.15.199.142/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 41.68.22.0/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 66.230.232.19/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 67.202.44.125/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 67.202.48.109/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 75.101.176.194/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 75.101.238.112/32 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 31.168.0.0/16 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 62.219.0.0/16 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 79.176.0.0/13 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 81.218.0.0/16 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 82.80.0.0/15 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 84.108.0.0/14 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 85.130.128.0/17 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 109.64.0.0/14 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.5.64.0/18 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.5.128.0/17 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.6.0.0/15 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.8.0.0/13 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.16.0.0/13 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.24.0.0/16 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.25.0.0/17 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 212.179.0.0/16 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 217.22.112.0/20 -j DROP
inserted into my rules.v4 that iptables-persistent loads upon reboot.
:p
 
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Moshe1010 said:
There are many of them, you would never get to all of them.
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Those are just the beginning. I'm about to totally trash all the AmazonAWS ones as all I'm getting from there are spam. Israel is about to be out also as well as China and the Koreas.
It's an ongoing battle - but the IP's the use become known and then get published and then blocked. Then they have to go scrounge elsewhere. It will eventually become a pain for them if we are lucky (and no, I don't really host any images except on the Apple site - just don't like their tactics)
 
Tracy Perry said:
Those are just the beginning. I'm about to totally trash all the AmazonAWS ones as all I'm getting from there are spam. Israel is about to be out also as well as China and the Koreas.
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What Israel did wrong to you lol. China is the biggest problem in terms of bots/spammers. I made a huge .htaccess file with lots of IP ranges and my bandwidth decreased by 50%.
I can't see any spammers from Israel since ISPs there are really strict about this.
 
Moshe1010 said:
What Israel did wrong to you lol. China is the biggest problem in terms of bots/spammers. I made a huge .htaccess file with lots of IP ranges and my bandwidth decreased by 50%.
I can't see any spammers from Israel since ISPs there are really strict about this.
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Israel is hosting a LOT of the IP's used by PicScout (particularly Bezeq International). Unluckily a lot of the ranges will also impact the ISP's there. I'm not doing it via .htaccess - I'm dropping the connection via iptables before it even gets that far.
 
I am from India and I have too received such warning calls before . But I cited the same reason as @Audentio said and they did nothing further after I removed the image.

Also, I am interested to know what kind of technique verge.com use As my webpage containing their image was entirely blocked.
 
Tracy Perry said:
Israel is hosting a LOT of the IP's used by PicScout (particularly Bezeq International). Unluckily a lot of the ranges will also impact the ISP's there. I'm not doing it via .htaccess - I'm dropping the connection via iptables before it even gets that far.
Click to expand...

Very interesting, and I'm really surprised that nobody here has connected all the dots. PicScount was acquired for $20M by Getty Images, which in turn is owned by Hellman & Friedman.

Hellman & Friedman also owns Internet Brands.

Are there perhaps some common influences in their strategies?
 
MikeMpls said:
Very interesting, and I'm really surprised that nobody here has connected all the dots. PicScount was acquired for $20M by Getty Images, which in turn is owned by Hellman & Friedman.

Hellman & Friedman also owns Internet Brands.

Are there perhaps some common influences in their strategies?
Click to expand...

even worse, Getty Images has been bought by Carlyle Group.
And I guess by now everyone in the world knows that Carlyle is an evil company....

https://www.preqin.com/item/carlyle-buys-getty-from-hellman-friedman-for-3-3-billion/102/5558


:whistle:
 
Sorry for lack of details. I'm in the United States. The law firm that sent this stated it was on behalf of BWP Media USA.

As I mentioned, I removed the image immediately after opening the letter and scanning the draft. I left them a VM as well as sent an email to their offices. Hopefully that will be the end of it.
 
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