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Getty Images Letter Forum / Questions about my upcoming battle

« on: June 11, 2012, 03:39:27 PM »

Helllloooooo all and thank you founders for having this site. This is my first time coming up against something like this and extremely happy to have such a resource at hand. I'm still in the process of reading the forum materials since this morning and viewing some videos before i go too much further but was wondering if perhaps any details were significantly different based on my scenario. I'm not trying to claim special case or anything of the sort, just not seeing anything necessarily in the same boat to the same degree so i wasn't sure if it was further down and i just hadn't gotten to it yet. I tried searching for my hosting provider but nothing came up there. Anyways, back in 2007 I bought a domain with my hosting provider for my wife and her company she was starting. I'm in IT by trade but definitely not web design, so i used the free templatebuilder provided by the web hosting service. I tried going in to build a new site now but the image in question that Getty wants $1300 from me for is a banner image on my site that they have for some reason no longer put in the template builder. Before i contact my hosting provider i was wondering if i even should or should i proceed the route of accepting the fact that I'm the end user and according to the letter I've read from Getty it is ultimately my responsibility according to them? Also, despite the fact that the domain name is registered to me and has my address and my name (albeit the phone number is no longer active) they (Getty) has contacted my employer and sent my legal department cease and desist letters. Is this even a valid approach? My employer has absolutely ZERO to do with my wife's business that has never netted us more than 100 dollars in the 5 years of existence because she never told me to take it down or leave it up. How can they draw attention to me in this manner and can i do anything to fight it or at least get it out of my company's sights because this affects my employment. I've never even used my company email to do anything to the site ever and it has never been on any of my domain registrar information ever, because that's a personal thing that again i don't want impacting my career. Just wondering how they're allowed to contact my employer for something with absolutely no correlation to my employment? Wouldn't that be like Best Buy calling my employer about me being late on a payment for a TV? I told my wife about it too and she instantly wanted to remove the image and leave it be but i told her we can't ignore this and need to act but to give me the day to continue researching.

I look forward to any feedback and while still really really early on in my fight (even though my work has been apparently shelving this repeatedly for over a month apparently ugh) i thank any and all for their feedback.