Another case of a fearful Getty Victim

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

It amazes me how many people are paralyzed by fear and try to hide or ignore the threats getty Images and Timothy B. McCormack make.. below is a portion of an  exchange I had with a couple of people on the Facebook Getty Group page (not the ELI page)..

Julia Carpenter: I talked to an attorney and was advised if you "did not" use the photo they claim, you have a case for a harassment suit. Small business can't afford lawyers and lawsuits, so his advise was to simply write McKormack and inform them that they are in the wrong, and guilty of harassment, or just ignore them and see what happens. If they take you to court and you did not use their photo they will owe you instead plus all your court costs.

Robert Sloopy Krausankas: Just because you MAY have an harassment case, doesn't mean you WILL WIN , question is are you willing to shell out the money to find out, there are no absolutes and your attorney should have advised this as well. 1 or 2 letters from McCormack would hardly be harassment.

Julia Carpenter: Personally, I would not waste my money on a lawsuit. (Maybe I should have explained it better). But, in the event they ever get brazen enough to take someone to court, you can use this (wrongful harassment) as a counter-suit. Has anyone ever contacted ABC news to investigate Getty
Images and their attorneys???

Robert Sloopy Krausankas: ABC news and all the other large media companies are in bed with Getty images, unfortunately . I personally love counter suits, but Getty won't file for 1 or 2 images

Julia Carpenter: Well, guess what. A couple of hours ago I received a second letter from McCormack demanding $12,974.00. What ever happened to the original $2000.00 settlement they Getty offered??? I offered a $500.00 settlement to leave me alone as I only made $118.00 profit on my product. Getty would never answer back. Should I just keep ignoring them. They would have to travel more than 300 miles to file in my county.

Robert Sloopy Krausankas I not going to suggest ignoring them or not, but I do want to invite you to share this letter with us at extortionletterinfo.com, as we would love to add this to our library and report on it publicly. We would redact all of your info, website etc..13k is an outrageous amount for a single image, we would tear McCoramck art at ELI over this.

This was back on Nov. 16, she gets a letter from Seattle Attorney Timothy B. McCormack "The Honest" attorney demanding  $12,974.00 and she does nothing about it, she ought to be screaming from the roof tops for gods sake...but nope she just lets it continue to wreak havoc on her nerves..

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

It always amazes me when people do not stand up for what is right and what they believe in.  This is what keeps Getty, MasterFail, Corbis, HAN and the like going.  The money is too easy for them.  Would post the link to that Getty FB page you are referring to, I would be interested in reading it.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Sure thing Greg, it's a group thatI somehow adopted as my own, feel free to join the festivities!

http://www.facebook.com/groups/39084563537/

[stinger]

I am beginning to think Getty's strategy is designed for people like her.

The longer I am in this, the more I think that they know that say 7 - 10% of those threatened will fight back.  If they can identify this group early, they can choose to waste no more time on them.  They just chase the rest.  It's a profitable business run by clerks and word processors.

If they stay out of costly legal battles, which only happen with those willing to fight, the rest is pure profit.

This is why we need to raise the stakes and get them out of the game.  I am afraid that to win this game on a large scale, we will need to somehow fire the first shot.

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

Stinger,

I would tend to agree with this although I don't think it is just Getty that uses this. The trolls will generally back down from a fight in a confrontation because the last thing that they want is to go to court get the records through discovery. There was a recent case I posted about over on the P2P thread where the troll made a large settlement to the defendant who had countersued and requested all of the trolls financial documents through discovery. The troll realized it would be cheaper to pay the defendant what he wanted to make them go away than to expose his racket and ruin his business entirely.

I personally think we will see less actual lawsuits than we had in the past, at least for a while even though we did not really see that many, I think Aloha Plastic Surgery in their countersuit will make the trolls think twice. Also why do they need to sue in less there is a case of willful infringement when there are so many out there who will just roll over and pay out of fear instead of doing even minimal research to confirm their gut feeling that this is wrong and extortionistic.

I am beginning to think Getty's strategy is designed for people like her.

The longer I am in this, the more I think that they know that say 7 - 10% of those threatened will fight back.  If they can identify this group early, they can choose to waste no more time on them.  They just chase the rest.  It's a profitable business run by clerks and word processors.

If they stay out of costly legal battles, which only happen with those willing to fight, the rest is pure profit.

This is why we need to raise the stakes and get them out of the game.  I am afraid that to win this game on a large scale, we will need to somehow fire the first shot.

[stinger]

Sadly, I agree.

Also why do they need to sue in less there is a case of willful infringement when there are so many out there who will just roll over and pay out of fear instead of doing even minimal research to confirm their gut feeling that this is wrong and extortionistic.