Coffee Shop

23 Sep 2021,  Steve

Copyright Infringement

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT! Has anyone been approached by a company claiming that you have used pictures for which a licence was not obtained and therefore have infringed Copyright? These is a large invoice attached to the claim and I am curious to know if this is just another scam. We have done our checks & balance and have found that the image in question is also on several very high profile web sites and over 300 less well known sites.

20 Nov 2021,  Steve
In the end the bill was paid as it is such a grey area, the company behind this money making operation is based in Europe and has branches in other countries. The way forward is to write a generic e-mail to all suppliers requesting authorisation to use their images, not to be cropped or altered and keeping their company logo in sight. Happy days!
11 Oct 2021,  Plantman
Be very careful with this kind of thing, there are a lot of "copyright trolls" out there sending 1000's of emails / letters, often the figures are grossly exaggerated. If there is any substance to the claim make sure the image is taken off the media in question. It may or may not be genuine but I can be fairly certain the requested "settlement £ " is way above the "actual loss" they or the client may or may not have suffered. You may wish to take proper legal advice if you believe this is real, you may wish to ignore if you feel it is not. There are genuine companies that do provide this "service" to image holders and operate within the law, but essentially are money making machines primarily using image holders material to generate fees and pay them a cut, which may well be more than some receive for the original image in the first place, it's a win win for both the parties involved. More of this kind of stuff is possible now as tech advances evermore and even cropped manipulated parts of images can be quickly identified to the original "parent" image. I have used reverse image search myself and found many copies worldwide of my own images, mostly messed with a bit but clearly my image - I'm ok with that it cost me nothing to point my phone at a flower and upload it. And there is the problem! It is so easy to do with smart phones nowadays I wonder how a lot of these companies selling images make any real money, it must be a shrinking market for them, paper catalogues dying out and every nursery going online taking snaps with a smart phone. They are looking to other revenue streams hence you got a invoice.......... Perhaps come back and lets us know what came of it.
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