Any new news on Masterfile?

[The-Gobbler]

The consensus here on the board is that Masterfile is among the trolls most likely to be aggressive and actually sue people.  Still almost all the stories here are at least 3 years old.  I'm wondering has anyone dealt with these guys in recent months? Last thing I can find on the boards here is a reference to a suite in 2011... anyone seen evidence that they are stepping up their aggression or actually suing people?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Looks like they have filed suit 3 times so far this year..whether this is "stepping up" is open to interpretation.. I'm fairly certain Carolyn Wrights office is now involved with them, and she's pretty well known in the photogrpahy world.

https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Masterfile&cases=mostrecent

[The-Gobbler]

Scary stuff.  The first one of those (concerning "Eclipse Roofing") seems to involve Oscar.  They claim that they "attempted to contact Oscar via email more than 20 times" and he never responded, hence the suit.

Curious if this is actually true?
And even scarier that these clowns are suing over a single image?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I beleive they contacted Oscar, and he never responded simply because he was NEVER retained by them. I'm not sure whether they were a part of the letter program either, but there is a huge differrnce between the letter program and retaining Oscar to defend a lawsuit.

[The-Gobbler]

So you mean that the defendants in these cases falsely claimed to be represented by Oscar? The way the trolls write their complaint makes it sound as though Oscar wrote them a letter then never followed up.  I'm assuming this is not true given Oscar's good reputation around here. 

That said, I did ask him for a letter last year on our own troll problem and never heard back from him. I ended up paying the bastards just to remove the stress.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I'm not sure of the specifics, but I do know that the defense letters includes 1 letter to the trolling company and one follow up leeter if need be, the the trolls file lawsuit it is up to the recipient to then hire counsel, whether it be oscar or another firm, Oscar was never retained in this case. In terms on not hearing back from Oscar or his office it lies with the recipient to follow up with his office, The defense letter program is not a number one priority in terms of his actual law practice, and sometimes things fall through cracks.

[DrSAddison]

After a long period of silence, Masterfile has threatened to sue me over one image - I just commented on the thread I started 2.5 years ago to ask for thoughts.  I've reached out to ask to enroll in the Defense Letter Program but haven't heard back. 

[The-Gobbler]

Yeah, I'm wasting a lot of time myself dealing with these bastards. They are about as ethical as street muggers, maybe less since they hide behind the law.

Anyway, one really obvious thing about Masterfile is that they jack up the price of the one image that they threaten people about.  The majority of their images are royalty free (RF) and cost $65 as a one time license.  However, every once in a while you'll see one that's "rights managed" and cost something outrageous like $1,500.  There isn't typically any appreciable difference in the images - the only difference is that the outrageously priced one happens to be the one they are threatening over.

In other words, they poke around (or maybe even deliberately release) images that people then accidentally use and suddenly jack the price up and start threatening to sue people. 

You can prove this by looking around until you fine one of their "rights managed" photos.  Do a tineye search on it and I guarantee you'll find dozens of unsuspecting users whereas their other images rarely come up.

It's really, really unethical.  However, it's probably legal.  That said, if they actually sue, I'd find it hard to believe a judge would seriously see the value of their images as anything more than $65 given they're almost identical to dozens at that price range.