Vincent K Tylor rears his ugly troll head...again

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

From Facebook:

My company received a letter from J. Stephen Street in regards to the law suit with Vincent K. Tylor and Vincent Scott Tylor images. We have been accused of using their images with their consent and have been sued for an ungodly amount of money. The images that were used were from "free" wall paper sites. A majority of the images we have been accused of using are found through our Pinterest account. All the images that they are accusing of us using have been "repined" through another user. Are they going after that person too? All of the images that are associated with my company have no watermark, have no copyright information, have nothing to indicate that this photo has been registered to a photographer. Upon receiving the papers, we have removed all of the images that we are being accused of using. What we would like to know is, is there a class action law suit against this photographer?

I've invited the poster of this to the forums..this is all I have, and I'm curious if a suit has been filed, guess i'll be going into PACER afterall!

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

There does not appear to be any new suits filed by Vincent K Tylor, but it just dawned on me after re-reading my post that copyright troll Vincent K Tylor is teaching his son the ways of trolling.. His images also appear on FREE wallpaper sites.. I'm going to try to confirm whether or not Glen Carner of Hawaiian Art Network and Vincent K Tylor have gone separate ways. I hope this poster from FB visits the forum and shares her letter with us to shed more light on this..

Also we have a mention of Pinterest, knew it was just a matter of time, it's gonna be open season before long.

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

I remember SG talking about Pinterest trying to block PicScout awhile back, it is in my file of stories I wanted to watch and follow up on.  That list is getting way to big   I have wondered about pinterest for a while now, I do not use it.  Can anyone tell me when you "Pin" images are you copying it to your board or are you just linking it like here on the forums?  If the images are just linked I don't think the people who pin have much to worry about.  If the links are traced back to the people where the images are linked from that could be another matter…

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/pinterest-blocks-getty%27s-picscout-infringement-bot/

There does not appear to be any new suits filed by Vincent K Tylor, but it just dawned on me after re-reading my post that copyright troll Vincent K Tylor is teaching his son the ways of trolling.. His images also appear on FREE wallpaper sites.. I'm going to try to confirm whether or not Glen Carner of Hawaiian Art Network and Vincent K Tylor have gone separate ways. I hope this poster from FB visits the forum and shares her letter with us to shed more light on this..

Also we have a mention of Pinterest, knew it was just a matter of time, it's gonna be open season before long.

[Mulligan]

Greg, some images I pinned for a client were saved like this...

http://media-cache-ec3.pinterest.com/upload/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.jpg

Is this a field of easy pickings for the copyright trolls?

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

Mulligan, I get a 403 Forbidden when I click the link.

Greg, some images I pinned for a client were saved like this...

http://media-cache-ec3.pinterest.com/upload/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.jpg

Is this a field of easy pickings for the copyright trolls?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

in  a nutshell here is how pinterest works..

when i pin something to my board, pinterest "copies" that file and it is stored on pinterests servers under my account..

Pinterests TOS clearly makes pinterest out of the picture and puts the responsibility on the end user. Pinterest would be covered by DMCA safe harbor as they allow users to upload and they have a registered agent, as well as a means to report infringements.. this is all clearly spelled out, but we all know how many people actually read these terms and understand them..bottom line the ends users will start getting letters, from getty, MF Tylor and the rest of them...mark my words this is going to get ugly.. When the whole copyright/pinterest firestorm was brewing, pinterest was very quick to make changes to their policies, covering their asses, while at the same time leaving their users on the hook.. I've been proactive with my photosite and added the "no-pin tag to keep people from pinning my images ( not that anybody would want to), but even this is not fool proof..

::EDIT:: I gues I should mention "repinning" as well... much like retweeting, this add the same image to other boards, but does NOT make an additional copy, but it does lead back to the original board..for example
Greg pins the image of matthew snoring on my couch, Mulligan comes along and repins it on his board....

I find mulligans boar wih my image pinned, which leads back to Greg, so greg gets the letter demanding payment for infringement...naturally the trolls will also send mulligan a letter demanding money in the hopes that mulligan does not understand that he did nothing wrong in terms of copying..

As soon as the first suits and demand letters start surfacing, pinterests day will be numbered IMHO

more info: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/02/29/a-word-of-caution-for-pinterest-users/

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

Thanks for the explanation on how Pinterest works thanks for the explanation on how Pinterest works as well as the link to the Plagiarism Today article. Yes, it appears the way Pinterest is currently set up the and users are on the hook to the trolls. It seems they could've accomplished pretty much the same thing and keep everybody happy as well as safe by linking back to the image. I can see Pinterest becoming the next troll battleground.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I've spoken to several folks in regards to this, and as usual they don't seem to care nor are they concerned.. at this point I'm thinking it will be more of the same from the trolls. They won't actually file lawsuits, but they will send letters, and as we all know xx% of those recipients will simply pay for fear of getting sued. This I believe will lead to Pinterest users backlash, where they will loose many users, thus hurting their income. afteral just like facebook,google and the rest.. the user is the product which generates revenue.

[Mulligan]

Greg, the link wouldn't work because I replaced the actually .jpg name (strings of numbers and characters) with the multiple xxx to retain my client's info.

The client had me pin several hundreds of their own photographs to get more links in the search engines.

I've been tracking some of them out of curiosity and to date it doesn't appear that google loves Pinterest the way it does other social networking sites.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Greg, the link wouldn't work because I replaced the actually .jpg name (strings of numbers and characters) with the multiple xxx to retain my client's info.

The client had me pin several hundreds of their own photographs to get more links in the search engines.

I've been tracking some of them out of curiosity and to date it doesn't appear that google loves Pinterest the way it does other social networking sites.

Google is after "content" pinterest has very little of this, images are not considered "content" by and large.. I would use caution doing this, as google may consider all these pinned images linking back to your clients site as spammy, and thus actually penalize that site.. Make no mistake link backs are important, but whats equally important is that the sites linking back have relevant content as well...just my opinion, what the hell do i know anyway?!......

[lucia]

 All the images that they are accusing of us using have been "repined" through another user.

repinning sounds like hotlinking. Right now, someone who gets the letter should say "hotlinked" and site Perfect 10.  Maybe the troll can go after the first-to-pin, if they can identify a sufficient number of personal details to send that person a letter.  That might not be easy.  But the fact that might be difficult doesn't turn repinning into not-hotlinking.

[stinger]

So if Pinterest can be the next area for trolling, what of Facebook?  Do they copy the image or just link to it.  If I do a facebook share of an article I like, does it get copied or just linked to?  If I share an article that has a licensed image in it, I did not license the image.  Might I be responsible for anything I share?  Or have the facebook folks figured that out?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Stinger, if you "share" one of my photos on facebook, the share would simply link to my photo/album...same for articles and whatnot.. I also don't think Facebook "figured it out" I think it's more of a case that Pinterest hasn't..

[stinger]

That's what I thought, but I feel better having that corroborated.

[gjwahine]

I saw the question asked a in Dec 2012 if Vincent has been sending out demand letters again. I can verify that he has, and it's the same MO as all the previous comments describe. Image available on free wallpaper sites, image ends up posted somewhere, it's shared/pinned and then demand letter arrives.

One thing to note on Pinterest, just because their TOS is a contract, doesn't mean it's law. The Pinterest Business TOS state business profiles are responsible for liability of pins and re-pins, doesn't mean that agreement can be applied or adopted by a 3rd party. When you apply copyright law to all of these cases, these images can almost be put under the abandonment clause—putting a photo on a free wallpaper site is like putting out a stack of photos on the street and then suing because people take them.

Scary thing is these companies' lawyers are actually settling out of court!! And I'm talking right now.

Does anyone have recent information or experiences they are willing to share to help put an end to this roach of a person? I like the idea of a class action lawsuit.