July 10, 2008

Image copyright infringement: £1200

by Brian Turner

Damn, another brown envelope, another legal notice.

It turns out that on one of my sites I’d used a thumbnail image to accompany an article. Getty Images just wrote to tell me “Oi, thanks, that’s one of ours – remove it and pay £1200 in damages for unauthorised use, please!”.

Another stupid mistake on my part.

The site in question already uses purchased stock photos – heck, I have about 70MB of stock images already paid for on my hard drive.

It looks like I just grabbed a simple thumbnail from Google images late one night and pasted it into an article for illustrative purposes.

And now Getty Images have come thundering in for it.

My fault entirely and another grand wasted.

Though I think the damages are over-priced, when compared to the legal fees I’d invoke consulting with my own solicitors, plus my own business time taken up in contesting the charge, plus the fact that I would likely have to pay something, it probably adds up the same either way.

And another kick up the backside that with corporate development comes corporate responsibility, and that means never taking simple easy short-cuts – even if they appear harmless at the time.

Take note and learn from my lessons. :)

Questions? Discuss this in our Internet Business forums for help and advice

Story link: Image copyright infringement: £1200

Add to Bookmarks: