A non-lawyer idea about "The Letter"

[Moe Hacken]

It sounds like most people are receiving a letter accusing them of infringing a copyright because they allegedly have a copy of an image file on their server, which was identified by a crawlbot designed for this specific purpose. As "proof" that a copyright infringement took place, they take a screen capture and attach it to "The Letter". The screen capture allegedly shows an image that was copyrighted being wrongly used. That allegation has yet to be disputed, but there is another fact that is indisputable. The image capture they send with "The Letter" contains copyrighted content, such as the website logo, which they have no permission to reproduce, especially for commercial use.

I'm not a lawyer. Is this line of thinking going anywhere?

BTW, this is a great forum, thanks very much to Oscar and Matthew for their hard work and to all the contributors for taking part in this exchange of ideas. Knowledge is power.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Been discussed before, this would not be considered copyright infringement on their part..So sorry to say, your line of thinking is indeed at a dead end..

[Moe Hacken]

Thanks for your prompt reply, and sorry for re-hashing. I'm trying to catch up on all this and there's much learning to do here. I'll search around the forum for some other thoughts I was having about this. Thanks again for all the time and effort you're all putting into this.

[Matthew Chan]

That is all we ask that people make an effort to get themselves up to speed. It can be a daunting and time-consuming job but well worth it. It will serve you well.

Take advantage of the custom Google search bar which is dedicated to searches on the forum itself.  It is better than even the built-in forum software search feature.

Thanks for your prompt reply, and sorry for re-hashing. I'm trying to catch up on all this and there's much learning to do here. I'll search around the forum for some other thoughts I was having about this. Thanks again for all the time and effort you're all putting into this.

[Moe Hacken]

Thanks, Matt, I do deserve the gentle ear tug. I will try to be diligent and read through all the posts before I put forth any other theories. I spent most of yesterday trying to catch up but only made as far back as Nov. 2011, so I'm sure I've missed a lot.

Buddhapi was kind enough to answer my redundant question. I can see he is very well-versed in this subject matter from what I've read here.

My field of expertise is image processing and retouching as well as graphic design. I have been a professional in the graphic design field since the 1980s. I have seen many changes in the industry and electronic media has created legal challenges that didn't exist with traditional analog media, such as print, from the moment of its inception. As a career professional in this industry, I have always been very interested in these matters.

One comment I'd like to make is that, regardless of one's feelings about the "business plan", the crawlbot software is quite amazing.

In the case I'm aware of, an image claimed by HAN/VJK was used by a person a long time ago. The person estimates about 10 years ago. This person claims the image came from a royalty-free image CD purchased at a retail outlet. This person modified the image very drastically by cloning parts of it and creating a textile-like image that would work as a seamless tile. I would estimate 95 out of 100 persons would not realize it came from the HAN/VJK image, but to the trained eye, there is no doubt. If I were testifying under oath, I would have to say I'm 100% sure the HAN/VJK image was used to create the collage-like seamless tile.

I must say that this software must be really good because the image had been severely scrambled from the original. There were some parts of the image that would still have a pixel-to-pixel match with the original, leaving no doubt about the source image, but not that many. I'm impressed that the software was able to find enough of a match to identify the source image by simply crawling the seamless tile file data.

The person who created the seamless tile felt at complete ease to use not only this image but other images to create a number of seamless tile backgrounds because they came from a royalty-free CD. These seamless tiles were posted on a website clearly stating they were free to use on other websites. This person still has the content up for anyone to find and it has been up at least since 2006.

Here's the interesting part. That person did not get the letter. Someone else picked up the image from this person's website, assuming they had the full blessing of the owner, and believing they were at liberty to use the file without worrying about IP issues. The latter was sent the letter, not the person who created the seamless tile.

As has been stated on this forum many times before, several HAN/JKV images are up on all kinds of "free wallpaper" images all over the web. I have found several matches for this particular image by doing a simple gsearch for the title keywords. Many of them are perfectly intact and are offered at very high resolutions for free. As has been noted here, I confirmed that some of the sites are in foreign countries, but I've identified some being hosted by GoDaddy, one of which had the image posted since 2009. Some even have an "author" on the page (it's usually not the real photographer's name).

As has been noted, the real photographer offers many of these same images that are peppered all over the www for as little as $10 for a 4x6 print.

If it would be useful to anyone, I could post the links to the sites where the images are STILL being offered as free downloads with no royalties or copyright requirements. One of them even offers you the HTML code to make it a background image for your site or your forum post.

Don't worry, I won't post the actual image here as a background!

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

Hey Moe,

There is actually a thread on here somewhere pointing out some of the many, MANY sites these images are available on. I think the thread was called "Free Baitpapers". But don't stop posting as you get up to speed. All content is useful and you may have turned up even more of these sites.

[Moe Hacken]

Thanks for the tip, mcfilms. I will check to make sure I'm not posting redundant links. I know there's several posts with links to the baitpaper sites. I like the link to the Glen Carner baitpaper download on brothersoft.com someone posted. The unmitigated audacity!