A friend of ELI

[Mulligan]

As I've said before and nicely illuminated by DvG's listing of legal and "do the right thing*" email and phone call victories, it's obvious that there's easy money to be made off one's creative work as long as a person's willing and morally capable of sending out emails and letters threatening people with lawsuits.

And, Lord knows, a $350 filing fee plus a percentage to various teams of lawyers (for example, six in the U.S. and one in Canada with, perhaps, new filing paperwork associates with scary letterheads being considered for hire in England, France, German, Spain, Japan, Russia, Bolivia, Iceland, Argentina, Mexico, and Greenland) represents a terrific investment when you know that move will force a settlement out of most likely almost ALL of those who didn't knuckle under to the initial settlement demand emails giving them the opportunity "to do the right thing.*"

DvG, of course you don't want to answer my questions about your income percentages because doing so would reveal facts that you need to keep hidden if you want to maintain any kind of credibility here on ELI. Everyone with three functioning brain cells understands that.

DvG, of course your terms are confidential. Confidentiality agreements represent one of the main reasons lawyers and trolls get away with the various schemes they get away with.

Quick rant: If all legal results were a matter of public record as they should be in a free and open society that has fair laws legislated to attain justice instead of laws designed to help greedy bastards line their pockets, internet copyright trolls and their collection agent lawyers would be forced to do some honest work to earn their daily bread instead of cashing in using fear, threats of lawsuits, and bullshit confidentiality agreements to keep their slimy schemes private.

"Everyone has a right to an opinion." Yep, but even though they can get away with it and indeed often gloat and brag about it, speculative invoicers do not have the right to lie or twist truth and laws to make money off those who scare easily or those who are intimidated by smooth talking bastards into paying money for images when as far back as 2008 there were already more than 40,000,000,000 photographs on the internet. Charging $100 to $200 for a de minimus infringement is not right in my book. But for some people it's obviously a satisfying ("I cleared $850 today, honey, with six quick phone calls!"), entertaining ("Damn, dog, I love fleecing the rubes!"), as well as an absurdly easy business model to haul in some serious money with very little work.

*To do the right thing -- In too many cases involving copyright trolls, that means... Pay me money for an image I bulk registered or didn't register at all because I know I can make a sweet percentage of my living playing Speculative Invoicing for Dollars.

[DavidVGoliath]

As I've said before and nicely illuminated by DvG's listing of legal and "do the right thing*" email and phone call victories, it's obvious that there's easy money to be made off one's creative work as long as a person's willing and morally capable of sending out emails and letters threatening people with lawsuits.

And, Lord knows, a $350 filing fee plus a percentage to various teams of lawyers (for example, six in the U.S. and one in Canada with, perhaps, new filing paperwork associates with scary letterheads being considered for hire in England, France, German, Spain, Japan, Russia, Bolivia, Iceland, Argentina, Mexico, and Greenland) represents a terrific investment when you know that move will force a settlement out of most likely almost ALL of those who didn't knuckle under to the initial settlement demand emails giving them the opportunity "to do the right thing.*"

DvG, of course you don't want to answer my questions about your income percentages because doing so would reveal facts that you need to keep hidden if you want to maintain any kind of credibility here on ELI. Everyone with three functioning brain cells understands that.

DvG, of course your terms are confidential. Confidentiality agreements represent one of the main reasons lawyers and trolls get away with the various schemes they get away with.

Quick rant: If all legal results were a matter of public record as they should be in a free and open society that has fair laws legislated to attain justice instead of laws designed to help greedy bastards line their pockets, internet copyright trolls and their collection agent lawyers would be forced to do some honest work to earn their daily bread instead of cashing in using fear, threats of lawsuits, and bullshit confidentiality agreements to keep their slimy schemes private.

"Everyone has a right to an opinion." Yep, but even though they can get away with it and indeed often gloat and brag about it, speculative invoicers do not have the right to lie or twist truth and laws to make money off those who scare easily or those who are intimidated by smooth talking bastards into paying money for images when as far back as 2008 there were already more than 40,000,000,000 photographs on the internet. Charging $100 to $200 for a de minimus infringement is not right in my book. But for some people it's obviously a satisfying ("I cleared $850 today, honey, with six quick phone calls!"), entertaining ("Damn, dog, I love fleecing the rubes!"), as well as an absurdly easy business model to haul in some serious money with very little work.

*To do the right thing -- In too many cases involving copyright trolls, that means... Pay me money for an image I bulk registered or didn't register at all because I know I can make a sweet percentage of my living playing Speculative Invoicing for Dollars.

Y'know, I had in my head a very well thought out response to all of the above, but I've kind of been confounded this morning by the following

"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /forum on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request

Apache/2.2.2.4 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.2.4 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 Frontpage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.extortionletterinfo.com Port 80"

Same error message when I try to access the front page of the site too. Curiously, this only happens on my desktop and laptop computers, which access the internet via my router on what must be a particular IP address. I don't have any issues using my phone to connect over 3G... though it's not best suited to lengthy replies.

I'm sure it's just a glitch, though, right? 

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Are using a proxy?? You have not been blocked, that I can assure you. Some IP ranges have been blocked for various reasons. If you pm me your ip I can look to see if it is on the list.

[stinger]

Quick rant: If all legal results were a matter of public record as they should be in a free and open society that has fair laws legislated to attain justice instead of laws designed to help greedy bastards line their pockets, internet copyright trolls and their collection agent lawyers would be forced to do some honest work to earn their daily bread instead of cashing in using fear, threats of lawsuits, and bullshit confidentiality agreements to keep their slimy schemes private.

Kudos to Mulligan's quick rant.

And more of the same to Robert for quickly trying to resolve DvG's connection issues.

Are using a proxy?? You have not been blocked, that I can assure you. Some IP ranges have been blocked for various reasons. If you pm me your ip I can look to see if it is on the list.

[brianjclark]

Now is it just me or does 25k for six photographs sound a damn good hourly rate?!

I know photography isn't about getting up early one morning, driving out somewhere and taking a couple of pot-shots at the passing wildlife, but maybe we should all put cameras on our Christmas list :|

[brianjclark]

As DvG is a photographer could I ask if there are any precautions that photographers can take to help identify images as to their owners etc.

Without wanting to make it sound like its the photographers fault, because its not, a lot of the trouble seems to be an image has no "address" of where it has come from or "id" or "catalogue" number that tells you who owns it. I can accept that someone must own it - even if its Public Domain or Creative Commons, but there seems no way to absolutely guarantee a source?!

It seems to always end up a them against us battle on here with photographers on one side and web developers on the other. Photographers are pissed off because they are losing out on income and web developers just want to know who they should pay?  If you knew an image cost $600 before you bought it you might decide not to. You might decide its the best image you've ever seen and pay $1000 but without knowing its part of a catalogue and who owns it you can't make that informed decision.

Maybe Google/Yahoo and the like should build in a cross check of known libraries and stock then label the result as such. Then nobody would be able to claim they didn't know, everyone would get money that was deserved and we'd never get another illegal, threatening letter.

Or am I missing the point and this is all generating too much revenue for images that wouldn't have sold anyway because the price was too high?

:/ hmmm