Greetings all and thank you for this site. I am in the US and I received the letter about a year and a half ago and have been ignoring it ever since. I used a very small pic temporarily while I was building a website template for my own use. I used it without knowledge of any copyright and took it off the website immediately upon notification. The whole deal felt like a shakedown and I felt they had no legal right to demand $1,000.00 for mistakenly using a small image that I really had no gain from using. I have been doing a lot of research on this and I have read everything on this site, but I still have a couple of questions:
1. Is there a statute of limitations on this. If so, when does the clock start ticking?
2. If Getty does not have the registered copyright on the image, why would they go to court? If I understand the situation properly, they are only eligible to recover actual damages (cost of image plus cost of finding it on my website) if they cannot provide the registration. If they went to court and were only awarded a couple of hundred dollars, then their whole extortion scheme would be exposed.
So, what I am hoping is that they know that they cannot go to court and that at some point have to give up due to a statute of limitations.
Any input on this would be appreciated.
Dan G
1. Is there a statute of limitations on this. If so, when does the clock start ticking?
2. If Getty does not have the registered copyright on the image, why would they go to court? If I understand the situation properly, they are only eligible to recover actual damages (cost of image plus cost of finding it on my website) if they cannot provide the registration. If they went to court and were only awarded a couple of hundred dollars, then their whole extortion scheme would be exposed.
So, what I am hoping is that they know that they cannot go to court and that at some point have to give up due to a statute of limitations.
Any input on this would be appreciated.
Dan G