Hi Booler
Thanks for that!
I have spent the last 48 hours investigating matters and, as it happens, my image did not belong to Corvis in the first place.
If I were you I’d ask the CAB about claiming your wasted time from Corbis at your hourly rate. What’s good for the goose…
In my reply to them, I’m also asking for a breakdown of their fees. If the image has a value of around £300 I want to know where the rest comes from.
I am not sure that this is the right approach. If you start talking like this you may give them the impression that you are ready to negotiate.
Booler is correct - to talk to them about where their figures come from shows weakness and a willingness to settle. Ask yourself what it is you are hoping to achieve by contacting them. Do you think that they will say “We can’t defend it, you’ve caught us out, let’s just agree to drop it” ?
Once you are on the spider’s web, its much more difficult to get off it, especially as the spider knows you are there. Best avoiding the spider’s web altogether.
Sal.
Hi All,
I haven’t read the numerous pages of the Getty Images topic so apologies if I am repeating somebody else.
Under UK law, there is a principle that you cannot recover more from a lawsuit than your actual loss i.e. you cannot penalise somebody. It is on this basis that a lot of bank and credit card charges have been challenged recently. For example, does it really cost your bank £30 when you go £1 beyond your overdraft?
The sums claimed by Corbis seem completely exorbitant when compared to the cost of licensing the image for use anyway. Unless they can prove some loss or damage above and beyond the cost of licensing, a court is unlikely to accept such a level of damages.
I should of course add that in any event if law firms such as B&M start sending letters to you, you would be well advised to consult a solicitor.
Kind Regards
Robin
Hello
B&M have copied my page to send me a screen-capture, this also amounts to copyright infringement on their part, as I never gave them permission to do so.
This is a civil court matter. No hope for Corbis to recover legal costs and it seems they will only be able to recover the license cost, no management, legal fees, etc.
Tristana, it may be worth getting confirmation of the above. I am taking legal advice and I have been told that most copyright issues are not held in the small claims court. My information is that they are tracked by the court to a more senior judge with copyright experience and legal expenses can be claimed.
It is a bit discomforting when two authorities are providing conflicting information.
Booler,
If I had profited from the image (i.e. resold it or similar) then my case would automatically go to the Criminal Court. I haven’t!!!
I’m deleting all my comments. A quick search on Corbis in Google brings up this page at the top of their rankings. Not too sure about the implications just yet.
This is very worrying. In your previous post you said …
This is a civil court matter. No hope for Corbis to recover legal costs and it seems they will only be able to recover the license cost, no management, legal fees, etc.
Was the CAB offering bad advice?
I’m deleting my comments, as advised by my solicitors.
I’m deleting my comments.
I have also contacted a law firm in Manchester. They are going to write to them on my behalf. My lawyer says that they may just go away if the case is contested. I will obviously keep you posted.
Deleting my comments… eventually I will publish everything
Comment deleted
Does anyone have any updates on this? Has anyone else received the threatening letter?
I’d like to know how they are going to prove it was you that actually uploaded the image and not someone else unless the FTP logs have been archived or you have sole access to the server passwords. Anyway good luck.
Someone from Archive.org (the Wayback machine) has joined the discussion on the Getty thread. They are concerned about the effect this may have on their operations.
use robots.txt (robots exclusion protocol):
To exclude all robots from the entire server
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
To allow all robots complete access
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Or create an empty “/robots.txt” file.
To exclude all robots from part of the server
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /private/
To exclude a single robot
User-agent: BadBot
Disallow: /
To allow a single robot
User-agent: WebCrawler
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Below, three directories are excluded.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /~joe/
read about it: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html#robotstxt
Today is three weeks since the final deadline they gave me and I have not hear anything.