Hi

Ive got a website for a small business I run with a mate. We had the website built by his brother in law who had just started getting into web design and used our site as a bit of a test to try to start a business of his own.

3 yrs later I just get a sh&*ty auto email from a company in the states called aurora who have an online image library. Turns out one of the small photos on our site is their photo and we didnt ask permission (ie pay them some cash).

The email has a pic of their pic, pic of it on our site and a clicky link which sends you to a url that calculates that we owe them $400 and need to pay now!

Has anyone experienced this? What do I do? We’ve got our man to take the photo down. He’s apologetic as he got the pic from google images and there wasn’t any info on it that said it was owned by anyone. The internet is a shark infested pool of dodgy photos and videos being used, re-used and shared etc.

I know I guess im in the wrong using what I guess is someone elses property but how are you to know that? or who to send the cheque to in the first instance…

What do I do, what happens if I ignore it? to be honest I almost did as I get about ten spam emails a day that are in the same ballpark trying to extort cash from us for something or another and I though it was another one of them.

How do I know it really is owned by this co and i’m not just being shown a photo that’s got no owner…

Help…

It’s not the pic of badger is it?

Nothing useful to add, sorry.

Do a google image search for that image and see who it links back to.
In future tell your chum not to pick images from Google!, either take your own or get them from a free to use web site.

If he hasn’t given you any details of himself or where to pay the money to ignore it, for a bit any way and see if he comes back to you.

IANAL

Is it Auroraphotos.com ? Looks like a legit stock photo agency, but letter seems harsh. Have a look on this site – it’s about fighting stock photo infringement claims:

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/

Ignore it, add their email address to your spam filter.

I had similar with this a few years ago.

I’d said we couldn’t just go pulling random images off the web to use on our site, the powers that be disagreed and carried on. Couple of years later and we get slapped with a bill for $700 or something for a tiny image of an island.

Legal advice taken and put up a bit of a fight but they persisted and we paid a reduced fee. We were bang to rights really – these guys can quite easily throw images around and then hunt them down a while later and send bills out for a couple of years usage. There’s plenty about it online.

If you paid for the site then I’d chuck it the way of the developer or go halves or something. You could try and fight it they might lose interest, I think they sometimes do but not in our case. Definitely try and check they own it first – Google search the image and if they have a library of shots for sale try and find it on there, and ideally work out what it would have cost you for the time you’ve used it if you want to fight them.

Now I’ll only let images I know our ours to use on the sites – for future shutterstock is a pretty cheap resource for that kind of thing.

If your mates brother is doing web design professionally he should damn well know about copyright issues, and that just cutting and pasting a random image of the internet is likley to lead to this sort of thing.

I’d be inclined to let him sort it out…his f**kup.

Negotiate a reduced rate, and then charge the site builder that amount.

Edit: For all those saying ignore it, can I ask why?

A US Company is unlikely to pursue a Copyright civil case in the UK, it would cost too much. I’d just ignore it.

If it was an image of mine I’d be expecting someone to pay for it – every image is owned by someone, usually those that took it so just taking images is simplistic and eventually you got caught.
I’d barter for less money, if they own it, do check, and pay half split down the middle with the web designer.

As above you’re bang to rights. Best (moral) outcome is that all parties walk away satisfied, otherwise you could ignore it and hope they don’t have a UK presence to pursue a civil claim.

Probably worth finding out the cost of the image and if you expressed an interest in buying the rights a compromise may be reached.

You are in a situation with clear precedents against you though, plenty of newspapers and such have been invoiced successfully for pulling images off forums and such for use in stories.

What is this “bang to rights”?
Somebody borrowed an image for a website without checking who owned that image, naivety and ignorance is not an excuse for IP theft.
Ignoring is fine until the agency ends up rights sharing with Getty, then you might end up facing costs and interest too.

It sounds like a mess up by the guy who did your page, id be looking to him to help out with the cost a bit.
It might be worth checking how long aurora have owned the pic. If they’ve just acquired it i doubt they can backdate the payment, if they’ve owned it all along though you need to pay….

…and there wasn’t any info on it that said it was owned by anyone…

They’re all owned by someone. Doesn’t need to be any info on them.

Getty can get pretty heavy over infringement of copyright, one of out clients was asked for £6k for multiple image use on their website, uploaded by themselves through the CMS. We had warned them, and with sites such as morguefile and Dollar Photo Club, there really isn’t an excuse in you can’t afford to get originals taken.

What footflaps said., ignore.

Thanks for some helpful comments, some not. He assumed it was a free image for some reason and I guess I just hadn’t thought to check. There’s so much crap out there on the net it seems a bit harsh to go for the jugular first offence if you see what I mean. Bit naive of me perhaps but I just hadn’t thought about it.

Family member of business partner so he did it for free for us, did a good job of it except for this issue!

I’ll do a bit of research and see what happens. I wouldn’t mind but it was the only photo on our site not taken by us and he just filled a small gap with it. It’s a particularly rubbish pic and we had discussed removing it in the past as it didn’t quite fit…

It just looked like a scam email to me so helpful on here those with experience.

Cheers

Do this: http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/spider-email-drawing-offered-as-bill-payment-486872

Remove the image then ask them to prove it was there?

They’ll have screenshots and it’ll be archived.

I’ve had this from the other side – companies taking images of mine and using them without permission. I try to pursue, but I don’t have the time or money to properly pursue the copyright infringers, so usually I just have to settle for them grudgingly removing the image from their website.

The decent thing to do would be to apologise, remove the image if you haven’t already done so, and pay a reasonable fee – say £100 or so for website use.

presume every image is copyrighted unless you find out otherwise

What is this “bang to rights”?

What you described really.

I think I’d be checking the source of any other images he used on your site too.

I had this because of a pdf document someone had put on our company site. Got a letter from Getty images who have a lot of previous for chasing down money. There was a link in the email to their photo library showing the photo. Take the picture down, say sorry and negotiate a reduced rate.

Although not helpful in this case, you can do a google image search and select “copyright free” images.

skids – Member

presume every image is copyrighted unless you find out otherwise

Copyright exists by default in every image/writing etc created by a person. It’s whether they CBA to chase theft that matter.

OP, as you have done take image down and then do nothing. It’s highly unlikely they will pursue you.

Copyright exists by default in every image/writing etc created by a person. It’s whether they CBA to chase theft that matter.

I think there may be some support to this in American law, but it is on much much more dodgy ground in the rest of the world, and in this case the UK.

I know someone who setup their own business, website wasn’t a big part of it so when a parent said “I’ll sort that out for you” they said “OK”.
Parent then ripped a local competitor’s website, not far off the whole site, changed the names/logos and posted up for their own. 😯

Cue email from competitor a couple of weeks later.
Dunno what financial arrangement was reached.

I think there may be some support to this in American law, but it is on much much more dodgy ground in the rest of the world, and in this case the UK

I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. When you take a photo (or produce pretty much anything) you (or the person who paid you to make it if that was the arrangement) then own it. The only exception is when the photo is of something or someone in particular. For example you can’t go into an art gallery, take a photo of an exhibit, then sell prints, likewise photos of people. Then you still own it, but you can’t sell it.

There isn’t a copyright office like the patent office where photographers send all their photos before they become copyright.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/305165/c-notice-201401.pdf

Plenty of photos on Flickr free to use under a Creative Commons License (inc 13k of mine).

MSP – Member

Copyright exists by default in every image/writing etc created by a person. It’s whether they CBA to chase theft that matter.

I think there may be some support to this in American law, but it is on much much more dodgy ground in the rest of the world, and in this case the UK. [/quote]

You may well think, I know, I studied IP law in my degree.

Plenty of photos on Flickr free to use under a Creative Commons License (inc 13k of mine).

Though of course there are different CC licenses – lots are CC Non Commercial.

Though of course there are different CC licenses – lots are CC Non Commercial.

And it’s an option, they don’t have to be just because they’re on Flickr.

My flickr account’s full of junk “can you send me a phot of” stuff though.

I really should create anew account for actual photography stuff as I don’t have a great record when it comes to saving stuff!