Messages

1

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty Images Threat Letter UK Survival Service - copyright lawyer on a fixed fee

« on: September 24, 2014, 09:59:56 PM »

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for your thoughts.  I contacted Oscar via this forum 4 years ago to find out how it might be possible to offer a real service to real people who get frightened witless by these letters from Getty.  I was annoyed having to turn away someone who came to me for help before you even started this forum and it bothered me.  I did not like what I saw then and I still don't. 

But in between everything else I took the time to think about how to make it work because it bothered me. I was bothered.  And in turn I bothered to work it out.

Oscar's set-up is different and there are huge differences between the UK and the US.  There is no big money-spinning situation.  There are no thousands of letters a week which Oscar is geared up to service.

I have also just revisited the exchanges from 4 years ago.  Communication did not work out.  You can see from the posts I went for the conference call option but it did not happen.  You also know communication is difficult and you wrote so - see below.

But the contact led to you establishing a UK letter forum here.

You wrote:

I have not yet spoke with anyone in the UK due to time constraints and the difficulty in scheduling (time zone differences). I may launch the UK Getty Forum before that happens and put out a disclaimer.

The links to all that are here:
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/uk-getty-images-letter-forum/need-help-in-the-uk/

and here:
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/uk-getty-images-letter-forum/need-help-in-the-uk/15/

Like you and Oscar I cannot spend a deal of time commenting here answering questions like an agony aunt.   

I also contacted you earlier this year by email.  You kindly replied and wrote:

The UK community is one we rarely engage or participate in because there appeared to be a pre-existing online community that already discussed and dealt with UK Getty when I got into it in 2008.  More importantly, neither Oscar or I are in a strong position to advocate for UK victims because we are Americans.  From what we can see, there does appear to be an informal support system and options for UK victims. It is hard for us to endorse or recommend anyone because of our unfamiliarity with anyone or customs in the UK.

We want to be "of service" if possible but we are hesitant to recommend or endorse anyone without knowing more about the mechanics, strategy, and other tactics/assumptions being utilized.

Last year, someone from the UK approached me to create some kind of relationship for the purpose of some kind of endorsement. I was willing to do so but other situations arose that were far more urgent.  And with the apparent challenge of communicating by phone due to time zone differences and scheduling, it all became too inconvenient so I never followed up.

As it stands, Oscar and I have more than enough dealing with Americans, Canadians, and the occasional Australian.

My sense of things in the UK is the activity is much less than when you started in 2008.  Things seem to have calmed down and slowed down but there are some people who still need help and don't know where to get it.

Some people will spend hours going it alone searching the web.  Others might turn to help from those who are not lawyers.  But there are some who are so stressed and anxious they need help from a copyright lawyer to take it over and deal with it for them but cannot find anyone.

It might be helpful to appreciate that an attorney over here is willing to offer a service even though it is not one that is particularly attractive financially to offer in the UK.

It is a true fixed fee service and there is a clear structure.  Folks know exactly what they are getting and what it costs.  I am not about to put all that up publicly.  People who really want and need the help can just contact me and they find out quickly what it is all about. 

So far so good.

You control and own this forum although you make it an open forum for anyone to post here.

If you want to shut this down on your forum that is your choice.   

A US attorney I know settled here years ago offering international services as a UK based US attorney.  There is a difference between those guys who sit in their offices for the people who need help to come to them and him - he goes out to where they are and meets them - he is there in the flesh making himself available.  The other guys are nowhere to be seen and it is a difference.  When someone mentions a law firm he says "Are they here?".

So I have come here and am offering this service after making it work for others. 

This is your forum.  You own it. You make it public for anyone to post on - even me.

So what do you want to do?  Shut down the contact on the part of the forum you set up for people in the UK? 

Like my US attorney friend, I made the effort to come here.  And you can see from what I say here that is true and it goes back 4 years.

And my posts on my law blog on Getty went up in 2011 after I drew a blank here in 2010.  You can see that from the dates on the comments.  So just because I have not spent the time on your forum after drawing a blank does not mean I have not been helping people. 

In hindsight maybe a PM to me before publishing your comment, would have been a positive welcoming gesture?

Matt, I hope that helps you understand a bit better.

2

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Getty Images Threat Letter UK Survival Service - copyright lawyer on a fixed fee

« on: September 22, 2014, 07:43:07 AM »

This is to let UK Forum members know that I provide a fixed fee Getty Images Threat Letter UK Survival Service.  It costs hugely less than you would expect to get a professional lawyer to write to Getty Images for you and a lot less than Getty Images demand from you.   The fixed fee is 25% of what Getty demands with a minimum fixed fee.  This is not a big money-spinner, the fee is reasonable and it only works because it is set up to be very time efficient. 

If you need help, click here:
http://tinyurl.com/oh7umaw

or Google "Getty Images Threat Letter UK Survival Service" and you will find my law blog where the service is explained.  I have helped many people.

Some years ago I was contacted by someone seeking help and turned them down as it would cost more to get advice than to pay up.  And that bothered me then and since.  So after later taking on a couple of cases I decided to offer a service like this.

It takes a lot more time to provide the service than it is worth to the average lawyer but I know these Getty Letters worry people a great deal so offer this service generally at well below normal cost semi-"pro bono" to help the "little people" who are threatened over just one image. 

And even if there are more images it also saves people in business a great deal of their time and worry and lets them get on with their business and do what they do best - earn a living.

In some [but not all cases] I may be able to provide the service to those in other EU countries.

The advantages over writing yourself are:

• it has worked very well [so far and my first Getty Images threat letter clients were threatened in 2007];
• you get a professional lawyer engaging Getty Images for you;
• it saves you time and worry;
• and if you are harassed by debt collectors like Altradius I have been dealing with them in the few cases where they have been involved and at no additional cost
• and if Getty Images ever do try to take you to Court, which has not happened so far to my clients, in most cases I can guide you how to handle it so you can get yourself into a position to avoid a massive costs bill from Getty Images' lawyers

I have been an ELI forum member for some time and have seen how some of you are greatly worried and others angered by what Getty Images do.  I should be able to help you and you can help me by using the service.

POSTSCRIPT:

If you read the post below from Matthew you will see Matthew is unhappy I am using his website to let people know of this service.  He considers it an "ingenuous and disrespectful post". 

He wrote that I wanted to "learn from us how to execute on a UK version of Oscar's Defense Letter Program".  I had already dealt with cases successfully in the UK. 

How to make it efficient for the general public was what I wanted to know but not getting any help from him I have instead established the "Getty Images Threat Letter UK Survival Service".  It works fine. 

Clearly, as he writes I "invite people to call ... and then you talk and sell them."  Whilst I do invite people to contact me to fix their problem, to keep things efficient it is necessary to avoid spending time on unnecessary communications.  There is no need for a "big sell".  The service is simple, quick, efficient and cost-effective, keeping time spent down, including on telephone calls.

And as anyone can see from the numbers of views of posts there are very few hits on this site from the UK.  The demand is limited but there is a need for the public service. 

For me it is great pleasure to be able to provide a cost-efficient public service and help people affected with the worry, stress and anxiety the Getty letters cause.

3

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Anyone else had letter from Science photo library?

« on: April 29, 2014, 05:00:23 AM »

Do these guys know about the internet archive?

Yes.

Do you know you can get your site taken off it?  If not, do it now.

You can also stop Google and other search engines creating cache pages of your web page too. 

Get the appropriate robots.txt file on the top level of your domain and if you cannot do that there are instructions for contacting the internet archive to get them to stop archiving your web pages:

https://archive.org/about/exclude.php

4

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: got sued by getty

« on: April 29, 2014, 04:51:28 AM »

Hi Micro777,

Tell Getty you cannot find any such page or image on your website and ask them to provide the URL [ie. web link] for the page where they say the image is found.

5

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Need Help in the UK.

« on: December 19, 2010, 08:11:09 AM »

Matt's email not received.  Conference call fine.

6

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Need Help in the UK.

« on: December 17, 2010, 05:22:13 AM »

Done.

7

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Need Help in the UK.

« on: December 14, 2010, 04:54:06 PM »

Hi Oscar,

I have had a number of UK cases with Getty.  

It is not such an impossible situation as some people seem to think and Getty can be beaten.  It is a matter of straightforward tactics - straightforward that is if you are a copyright lawyer sufficiently familiar also with the English court rules.      

Frankly I find Getty Images' approach to their business is not one that gives business generally a good press.

Maybe I should take a leaf out of your book and sell the UK letter that can be sent to Getty Images?  

The problem for most small businesses here is that the stakes are so low for lawyers to spend time on this and legal fees so high.  We are also highly regulated and proscribed by rules which mean taking on a new client costs a good deal of time and hence money in administration.

I have not read all the threads on your forum but probably somewhere someone has mentioned the only UK case that reached the English High Court door and settled [the J D Cole case - Claim No HC09C00794].  Not one of mine I am happy to say [better a 100 miles out of court than in].

We do not have contingency fees and the loser pays the winner's costs.  The only thing we do have are conditional fee agreements which can be backed by insurance against losing and are sometimes described as no-win no-fee - but that is not true in all cases - eg if the loser cannot or does not pay the conditional fee agreement winner.

Conditional fees cannot exceed 100% of the basic normal legal fee and the Court can disallow excessive conditional fees - so in personal injury work conditional fees might be around the 15% mark.

But there is a way of dealing with this that the savvy non-lawyer might be able to use to handle the problem themselves, given the right information.  Always a problem of course because some people are savvy and some people only think they are.

If you might be kind enough to point me to one or two threads on the UK issues I might if I get time take a closer look.

The situation in the UK is not the same as in the US but I would be interested to know how you approach this.  I have done a deal of work with US attorneys over the years in numerous states.