Higbee & Assoc. Lists RM Media Ltd in Nick Youngson Template Lawsuit

[Matthew Chan]

So, what defendants need to make note of is that Nick Youngson's/RM Media's "website disclosures" only occurred recently. I am not sure when he actually placed such disclosures but it is an important date/milestone.

There will be cases "BEFORE the DISCLOSURES" and "AFTER the DISCLOSURES". Every RM Media victim needs to make a notation of where they fall into this.  I think any reasonable person or court would see "creative-commons-images.com" and be easily confused by it.

And whatever disclosures he has made now was NOT done because he is being a "nice guy". It is because there are MANY victims falling into this "Creative Commons Images" HONEYPOT over $10 images. But somehow they become magically valued at thousands of dollars when it gets to the Higbee firms hot little hands.  It is fucking outrageous and it just keeps continuing.

..I recently visited one of his websites and immediately noticed that it had been "updated" and now displays the attribution requirement at the top of the page... 

While this change will probably mean less bees being trapped in the honeypot, as long as his images are still ranking in Google for "Creative commons images", there will be more victims...

[clist]

..I am not sure when he actually placed such disclosures but it is an important date/milestone...

...It is fucking outrageous and it just keeps continuing.

Me thinks it may have happened around the time that He decided to pursue litigation under the RM media umbrella.

Probably motivated by a few words from here or his "legal expungement specialist" representation... 

Again, I have no problem at all with people who genuinely want to protect their intellectual property.

That said, that's not whats going on here.

What we have here are scumbags running a legal extortion business by exploiting people's ignorance about the Creative Commons license though a loophole in the system. 

They and their legal representation are garbage people.

Straight up.

[UnfairlyTargeted]

With all due respect, I disagree with your assessment of Ripoff Report.  I think it's an excellent tactic for dealing with trolls, especially small-time ones.  They have to PROVE who posted the reports, and likely they've trolled many different victims.  Trolls don't play by rules.  Thus, I see no reason why I should either.  In case it wasn't clear, I am firmly in the never pay category.  Anyone sending me a letter can pound sand.

[Matthew Chan]

You can certainly do whatever you want. I just want to warn people that ROR is an unforgiving place. I know how ROR operates, more than most people. It is not a place I recommend.

With all due respect, I disagree with your assessment of Ripoff Report.  I think it's an excellent tactic for dealing with trolls, especially small-time ones.  They have to PROVE who posted the reports, and likely they've trolled many different victims.  Trolls don't play by rules.  Thus, I see no reason why I should either.  In case it wasn't clear, I am firmly in the never pay category.  Anyone sending me a letter can pound sand.

[fed up]

Can someone please answer on here how RM Media, picserver.org, and/or any other Nicholas Youngson sabotage sites can legally use web search snippets designed to optimize and advertise their images  in the free for commercial purposes and free to modify labeling filter in advanced image searches with Google? These pictures show up high and front and center in this search platform and the website search snippets do not contain any obligations or terms. They purely say that they are free to use for commercial purposes and to modify. They are optimized and designed for ranking and to be labeled in the filter for Google images advanced search for free to use for commercial purposes and to modify. How in the world can someone advertise something is free, get placed on a popular image search site as such which uses their website search snippets with meta desctriptions that they designed, and then threaten lawsuits and extort money for settlements to the poor tricked fools who believe what they are advertising?? My bigger question is how in the world is Google either unaware or doing nothing about it???

Picserver.org and it's owner cannot say that they do not know about the deceptive issues as so many have been caught up in the sabotage? Has anyone formally informed Google about this abuse and extortion due to their incorrect filtering and labeling of these pictures? This is out of control! I can't believe this has gone on for this long and people are still getting entrapped.

These webpage search snippets make it clear as day that many or maybe all of these picserver.org images are free to use commercially and to modify with absolutely no obligations,exceptions, or terms while there are licensed terms that are very hard to find and know. This is how and why Google image search is filtering them in that incorrect category. Everyone needs to write Google a letter, Godaddy (picserver.org), I think the FCC (please correct me if there is a different govt. commission for this type of abuse), and any other internet business enabling this extortion and abuse. Take pictures of all these snippets and keep all of your email threats in a file.

Can someone also please, please, please get me the date that the disclaimer was added to that picserver.org website at the top as it is the only other disclaimer in the screenshot of the website as the other warning is under the letters directory for the image that the license permits you to use free for commercial purposes and to modify however you want.

What they truly are guilty of is knowing this deception is fooling people into thinking the images are safe while they are not. They are handing you the keys to their car, telling you that you can take it for a drive, and then telling you that if you don't give them enormous amounts of money they are going to tell the police that you stole their car. This is screaming of fraud, false advertising, blackmail, etc. I just don't get how this has gone on so long. What the heck am I missing??

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Getting to the point of beating a dead horse but here goes...

Can someone please answer on here how RM Media, picserver.org, and/or any other Nicholas Youngson sabotage sites can legally use web search snippets designed to optimize and advertise their images  in the free for commercial purposes and free to modify labeling filter in advanced image searches with Google?

Very easy...there is nothing "illegal" about performing SEOmto get better search engine results.


These pictures show up high and front and center in this search platform and the website search snippets do not contain any obligations or terms.

and they don't need to

They purely say that they are free to use for commercial purposes and to modify. They are optimized and designed for ranking and to be labeled in the filter for Google images advanced search for free to use for commercial purposes and to modify.

correct, and they are FREE to use for commercial purposes and CAN be modified, so long as the end user abides by the terms, which are clearly there.
How in the world can someone advertise something is free, get placed on a popular image search site as such which uses their website search snippets with meta desctriptions that they designed, and then threaten lawsuits and extort money for settlements to the poor tricked fools who believe what they are advertising??

Because they are free, as far as I know there are no laws on the books dictating how one performs SEO, you were not "tricked" nor was anyone else, you simply failed to abide by the terms of the creative commons license agreement... I'm not defending Youngson, he's an asshole and douchebag for being a copyright troll, but from a legal standpoint, he hasn't misled anyone.

My bigger question is how in the world is Google either unaware or doing nothing about it???

Google has bots that grab the meta-description, and index the images, no human intervention, and if there was,it's not google job to police anything, their job is to serve relative search results to users and generate revenue through ads, and selling your surfing habits, along with tracking everything you do online,

Picserver.org and it's owner cannot say that they do not know about the deceptive issues as so many have been caught up in the sabotage?

Again with the deception.....Let me ask you a question, if you had read the terms and conditions would you have used the image?....Likely not, becqause you would have understood that attributiuon was a requirement..this all falls on the end user.

 Has anyone formally informed Google about this abuse and extortion due to their incorrect filtering and labeling of these pictures?
What "incorrect filtering"?? every google search resulot for an images contains "Images may be subject to copyright"...thats all google needs to do, they don't host the images, they simply link to them. As a web developer I can tag my pages, content or images anyway I would like to, if google percieves these tags to be "blackhat" seo, they may or may not index those items

 This is out of control! I can't believe this has gone on for this long and people are still getting entrapped.

Most people get "entrapped" because they don't know any better, others do and simply don't care about taking the risk, some like myself purchase or use images with a license that may be obtained from nefarious sources.

These webpage search snippets make it clear as day that many or maybe all of these picserver.org images are free to use commercially and to modify with absolutely no obligations,exceptions, or terms while there are licensed terms that are very hard to find and know.

They have no obligation to include anything in there meta descriptions...when you go to the site where the images are hosted there are links to the license agreement, which most people don't read...Have you ever read the EULA agreement before firing up your windows or Apple operating system?...Likely not

This is how and why Google image search is filtering them in that incorrect category.

Google doesn't serve results in categories, don't know where this come froms, Yahoo used to serve resukts in categories many moons ago.. I'm assumingt you mean a search like "free cat images"...if thas the case, there is no reason why the images should not show up there, provided they are images of cats, the images are FREE to use,,WITH ATTRIBUTION.

Everyone needs to write Google a letter, Godaddy (picserver.org), I think the FCC (please correct me if there is a different govt. commission for this type of abuse), and any other internet business enabling this extortion and abuse. Take pictures of all these snippets and keep all of your email threats in a file.

Good luck with this, I'm going to go piss up a rope, I'll be using my time better.

Can someone also please, please, please get me the date that the disclaimer was added to that picserver.org website at the top as it is the only other disclaimer in the screenshot of the website as the other warning is under the letters directory for the image that the license permits you to use free for commercial purposes and to modify however you want.

bottom line is the disclaimer is there, might not be the most prevalent item on the page, it's there..

What they truly are guilty of is knowing this deception is fooling people into thinking the images are safe while they are not.
FALSE, they are guilty of knowing that most users are to ignorant, lazy, dumb (use whatever term you want here) to read the terms.. I gurantee you if I were to use those images and provide attribution as stated in the terms I would NOT get a letter..

They are handing you the keys to their car, telling you that you can take it for a drive, and then telling you that if you don't give them enormous amounts of money they are going to tell the police that you stole their car. This is screaming of fraud, false advertising, blackmail, etc. I just don't get how this has gone on so long. What the heck am I missing??

You're missing that you may have used an image and did not adhere to the terms of use, so now you got a letter and need to decide how to move forward with YOUR situation to make it go away.. It's great to be pissed and fed-up, and great to be an advocate, but you need to see it for what it is, and not what it's not..It's a shitty thing, and youngson and others that are copyright trolls don't deserve a dime, there really are not many legal arguments to stop him, but the more negative exposure he gets, and the more people learn, the better off we all are.

[fed up]

Here is the snippet:

Picserver - B
www.picserver.org/b/
Picserver - B. ... Pictures starting with the letter B: ... permits the free use of the images for any purpose including commercial use and also permits the images to ...

Please show me where this website search snippet used to advertise and optimize images with the letter B claims that they have a license where you have obligations? This snippet is one of the many that Google uses to index these images on the Google Advanced Image Search Site. They specifically do not discuss obligations in this title, slug, or meta description and thus are trying to optimize and advertise these images under the free use for any purposes filter on Google. How again is this not deceptive especially considering so many use that filter. Also, let me ask you why does Google even have a label filtering system if it is unreliable. This snippet gives everyone the keys to the car. This is their intent and goal and it is effective. This is exactly why Google filters so many of their images as free to use for anything without any mention of obligation/terms.

I think it is fraud to advertise/optimize a snippet to promote the products of the snippet as free to use however you wish, yet when others fall for using the image due to it being labelled exactly as the meta description is written by the business, the owner of business tries to extort huge sums of money??? How again would a court of law not see their practices as intent to defraud others?

Also, the disclaimer was not there when many people grabbed their images and many only interpreted their main body verbage:

Pictures starting with the letter B:
The images below are licensed by RM Media Ltd under a Creative Commons license (the same version used by Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 ) which permits the free use of the images for any purpose including commercial use and also permits the images to be altered.

To see more information about a particular image click on the link directly below the image.

There were no disclaimers on that screen above or below until they added that disclaimer at the top.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

um right here:

on the main page:
The images below are licensed by RM Media Ltd under a Creative Commons license (the same version used by Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 ) which permits the free use of the images for any purpose including commercial use and also permits the images to be altered.

CC BY-SA 3.0  is creative commons share alike license


To see more information about a particular image click on the link directly below the image.

and here when you go to get the image itself:

http://www.picserver.org/b/barley-2.html

The image below is free to use for any purpose even commercial under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence attribution required, see license details below and FAQ.

Please ensure the license and image size are suitable for your use, alternatively you can purchase the original full size image on a rights managed license for a few dollars from AlphaStockImages.com here

you keep gpoing on about the meta tag description/slug etc, no-one is required to to discuss obligations...you may think it's deceptive and fraud and I and others may or may not agree with you, the question is what would the courts think?? I tend to think it would be a losing uphill battle...we can agree to disagree though.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

I would be willing to bet that before that disclaimer appeared, there was a link for terms of use, where the fine print was located, they probably added the disclaimer after catching heat from the interwebs, which in my eyes is a good thing, and surely would make rm media look better in the eye of public opinion.

[fed up]

Curious what others think here as imagine the amount of court cases there would be if this sabotage tactic was used in every industry?? Come and eat dinner for free at Applebees under our creative hall food program. Then 1 year later expect an email from Applebees threatening you for a settlement of $2000 for a $40 dinner you just walked away from assuming it was free. I guess you did not search for and do your due diligence about knowing that we have a creative hall food program license where you need to eat here again and pay for your dinner for that free dinner??? This is gross! You are summing up why it continues though Buddha!

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

The number of court cases is minute compared to the number of letters being sent...the Trolls DON'T want to go to court...
A. hence they get exposed ( look at the porn copyright trolls)
B. they would not profit and could lose their shirts
C. they risk counter-suits, and their backs end up against a wall

this is exactly why they prey on the uneducated ( those that don't know about copyright) and use scare tactics... to grab some quick cash.

This forum has been online nearly 10 yrs, and not much has changed, some new trolls have appeared, others have called it quits, troll lawyers have come and gone, friends have been made, enemies have been made, and it's a great think tank for fighting outside the ring.

[fed up]

Agree on all that Buddha. Love this site for many reasons, but I think some on here work in the legal field and thus have a belief that normal people somehow know what these licenses are. A legal professional may not be able to say he or she did not know, but obviously a ton of people did not know and to me the biggest deception is how the images get on googles advanced image search. Those license descriptions (ccy - ou8) or whatever in no way take away or make anyone not in copyright legal work believe that those images are anything, but free to use however you wish.

 Everyone I ask believes those images would be free to use and everyone I ask about the picserver.org page believe that the main body paragraph says those images should be absolutely free without condition. Normal people believe that license permits the free use absolutely for anything without condition, because that is exactly what the paragraph says. It says the license and then says the images are free to use. They make the point to say that the images are free. Why would they rely on the name of the license which most people don't know to show the terms of them being free?

Thank you for all your thoughts Buddha!