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Getty Images Letter Forum / another copytrack letter
« on: February 19, 2018, 09:18:37 AM »
Been reading through the forum, have a similar experience that is still ongoing.
Like a handful of others here, I got a letter from CopyTrack. I'm UK based - I got a few emails and letters from them a few months ago. Seems their automated software picked up an image on my website. In my case, while the image was copyrighted, my use of it would almost certainly fall under 'fair use' according to the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 - I wasn't using the image to "pretty up" a post, rather my blog post was *discussing that particular image* (the image was being spread on the Internet with a fake caption and my post was pointing out that fact.) As such my article and explanation would fall under "in the public interest".
Explained that to Copytrack - they didn't care. Kept sending letters, and now had my first letter from their third party "debt collector" (even though I don't have a debt with Copytrack) in my country, some small outfit called "credit limits international". After reading through the forum, it seems others have had similar experiences and if you just ignore them they go away...
Again, as others have pointed out, CopyTrack and their ilk treat this as a "bad debt" and constantly send invoices from "debt collectors". Misleading and should be against trading laws really! For those interested, apparently Copytrack think my use of 1 image means they can extort around 800 euros from me (since gone up to over 1000 now they've passed it on!)
Any comments, suggestions or advice welcome.
Like a handful of others here, I got a letter from CopyTrack. I'm UK based - I got a few emails and letters from them a few months ago. Seems their automated software picked up an image on my website. In my case, while the image was copyrighted, my use of it would almost certainly fall under 'fair use' according to the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 - I wasn't using the image to "pretty up" a post, rather my blog post was *discussing that particular image* (the image was being spread on the Internet with a fake caption and my post was pointing out that fact.) As such my article and explanation would fall under "in the public interest".
Explained that to Copytrack - they didn't care. Kept sending letters, and now had my first letter from their third party "debt collector" (even though I don't have a debt with Copytrack) in my country, some small outfit called "credit limits international". After reading through the forum, it seems others have had similar experiences and if you just ignore them they go away...
Again, as others have pointed out, CopyTrack and their ilk treat this as a "bad debt" and constantly send invoices from "debt collectors". Misleading and should be against trading laws really! For those interested, apparently Copytrack think my use of 1 image means they can extort around 800 euros from me (since gone up to over 1000 now they've passed it on!)
Any comments, suggestions or advice welcome.