Question if I May

[geezer123]

An image is for sale on a rival photo agency website (say a small one like Pinnacle or a large one like the PA) but not on Getty or any of it's subsidiaries.

How does Getty/LCS know that a licence hasn't been purchased for legitimate use of the image(s)?

I appreciate in a lot of these cases they are shooting in the dark and hoping to sucker in some gullible people but even if (and it is a very big if) rival agencies provided Getty licensing information who is to say that a web designer purchased a licence (in their own name) and placed the image and recovered the cost in their overall fee.

Just another piece of the puzzle I am trying to put together.... Topical question I guess would benefit other forum users also..

[stinger]

As long as were asking questions about things Getty does, why do they think that they can demand payments from images that were taken in space, by NASA, which are in the public domain?

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

An image is for sale on a rival photo agency website (say a small one like Pinnacle or a large one like the PA) but not on Getty or any of it's subsidiaries.

Just another piece of the puzzle I am trying to put together.... Topical question I guess would benefit other forum users also..

Lets not forget that Getty & LCS are 2 seperate entities ( both owned by Getty)

"LCS" is actually "Picscout", where artists, photogs, and stock agencies sign up and add their catalogs (images), which inturns allows "Picscout" to do its thing. ( scanning servers for matches).. So in essence Pinnacle may be a client of picscout, when a "potential match or hit" occurs the form letter is generated from LCS, which just happens to be housed at the same address as Getty images.

[Engel Nyst]

Getty/others don't know if a license exists, unless we're talking about images they have exclusive rights to and know history before they got exclusive rights to them.

In the letters I've seen, they do insert a small phrase saying that if you have a license, then attach it for them to see. Mind you, the letter is 99% threats and implications of unlicensed use, and 1% this small phrase.

I do think it is a lot of times like shooting in the dark for all images they don't have exclusive rights to, and maybe some for which they now do, but didn't have in the past. Remember there have been cases when a human clearly never LOOKED at the accused website, instead Picscout found an image and their system automatically sent a demand letter.