New extorting company: August

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I tto have never heard of them, one thing I will point out is that the letter is coming from picscout with a Getty address in seattle, no where in the letter does it refer to the business of "August" except just to say the image is owned by "August".. IF I were to reply ( which I probably wouldn't righ out of the gate) my first question would be.

1. Who the hell is "August?"
2. Is this a company?
3. Why does this company not exist at the address in the letter.

the whole letters smells of scam. If I replied I would further demand to see a signed contract by BOTH parties giving picscout the rights to collect on anything. I would also demand to see copyright registration information, as well as any model releases. I would probably further that by taking a play from jerry's playbook, and state if they cannot /willnot supply the above information, they will be recieving an invoice from me to collect on my time  that has been wasted.. ( naturally this invoice would be larger then the sum they are trying to collect)...

[Darkbotic]

Sadly, I just found the photographer. 
If you scroll to the right on his website, you'll find the photo.
Apparently he is a good one because he has a lot of celebrities photos. They're pretty good.
Also, look at his contact details. I'm definitely screwed. 

Google: Donfloodphoto.

[Matthew Chan]

How do you figure you are screwed?  I looked up his name (Don Flood) in Federal lawsuit database and I didn't find anything.  Unless he goes by another corporate name, I don't see any lawsuits.

Also, look at his contact details. I'm definitely screwed. 

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

does the photog have an exclusive signed agreement ( by both parties) with "August" to allow them to enforce his copyright? does the photog register his images and register them properly? does August and picscout have an agreement allowing picscout to enforce collections on copyright issues?...so many questions..

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

Again, you need to step back take a breath and get educated.  Leaping to conclusions like "I'm screwed" is not helping you.  Most all answers can be found here for those who look, read and learn.

[Darkbotic]

OK. Thanks everyone. I will ignore their letter while I read the posts on this forum.

[lucia]

With respect to credibility of Augustimages:
http://donfloodphoto.com/contact/ Does link to augustimages.com
That suggests that he likely does have a contract of some sort with them.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

With respect to credibility of Augustimages:
http://donfloodphoto.com/contact/ Does link to augustimages.com
That suggests that he likely does have a contract of some sort with them.

yes it does, but also remember one of the getty cases, where the photog was working with getty licensing images through them, the question arose in court of something along the lines of "show us the contract, that is signed by both parties", at which point getty did not have an answer, because the "contract" was supposedly done "online" by the artist and submitted to Getty, but there was never another signature. A contract HAS to be signed by both parties in some way shape or form..even a digital signature would probably suffice, but Getty did not have that either.

[lucia]

I'm not suggesting this means that we must automatically assume AugustImages is totally on the up and up and so on. But it is useful for a person getting letters to take things in context.  Until I saw the link from the photographer to the site, the chicken entrails used for prognostication were suggesting AugustImages could be some sock-puppet entity with nearly untraceable ownership for its domain name operating... somewhere... sending out scary letters.

But the link from the photographer suggests an actual honest to goodness photographer, whose domain is registered under his own name (http://whois.domaintools.com/donfloodphoto.com ) and whose IP is in the US does have a contract with August Images.  His photos are clearly high priced including lots of celebrities.  This means it's unlikely that the photographer operates without good knowledge of contract law required to maintain value of his portfolio.

If August Images does come back and press for payment, I wouldn't be hanging my hat on "Getty Images -- and entity that seems to permit online registration by anyone and anything without checking has been sloppy in the past-- so I bet August Images is too." August Images at least looks like truly exclusive images. (Even when comparing celebrity image to celebrity images, Getty's are often "decent quality paparazzi", August are "the celeb came to the studio and posed" and "these were used by high end magazines and advertizers". These are different from each other.)

That said: for all we know, August Images tends to just go away if someone removes the images from their site.  If so, Darkbotic may not hear from them again.  We really don't know.

[Oscar Michelen]

Never heard of August but it looks like they employed PicScout to develop their infringement program. As for the OP, they have not filed any lawsuits to date that I have seen but that does not mean they won't in this instance. Also, you cannot use the info on ELI that relates to stock photos of cacti, keyboards and the like, with high-res professional images of celebrities. So while you get educated tooling on the ELI forums keep that in mind.