Copyright 2015 Taylor Ellwood
I recently received an email from Getty Images informing me that I was using a picture on my site that they had copyright to. The picture in question didn’t have a watermark or copyright marking associated with it, but that wasn’t going to stop them from trying to claim their pound of flesh from a very small business (i.e. mine). I read the email, responded, and took the picture down from my site. I spent the rest of Friday taking all the pictures down on my website that I hadn’t taken, because I realized that if it could happen with one picture, it could happen with another. I actually spent the better part of the weekend and next two days doing the same on any site I’d posted content on, just to be safer than sorry.
Then Getty Images emailed me again to tell me they were going to charge me $250 dollars for this use of image (which had I known it was licensed, I’d have never used it). they offered to throw in a couple deals to get more money from me albeit in a way that legitimized my use of their images. I told them no thanks, pointed out I was a very small business, and asked, since this was a first time offence, if they could just waive the fee. They told me they had to have their pound of flesh and that it didn’t matter that this was a first time offence or that I hadn’t intended to violate copyright. All that mattered was that they got their pound of flesh, so I paid the fee.
In social media marketing, we are told that having a picture with blog entries is essential because otherwise people are less likely to read the content or click the link to visit the blog post. What we aren’t told is that we might get someone emailing us with a bill for using those images that we thought were free to use. Now it could be argued we should know better, but this aspect of images isn’t talked about much, which is one reason I’m writing this blog entry. And if you are like me, and you write blog entries consistently, you could get such an email, with an expectation that you’ll fork out a bundle. This incidentally applies to you whether you are blogging for the sake of just sharing information or, if like, me, your blog is part of your business and is thus considered a commercial part of your enterprise.
When you get a notice like the one I received, you should take the image down from your site if you don’t have a license for it. If you do, you can simply send them the license information, but as a note, you will need to renew your license at some point or expect them to try and get you to pay a fee when the license expires. If you don’t have a license, you have a couple options. You can try and fight them and see if your resistance gets them to back off. However, sometimes these people will sue and for them its to make a point that they won’t tolerate copyright violation, regardless of your intention. Alternately you can just pay the fee, which will suck because its quite egregious in terms of what it costs you.
And afterwards, when you continue to write posts, you may wonder what you can do about using images. Purportedly there are free image sites, where you can use images free of charge on your blog or website without any penalty. One problem however is that sometimes these sites have pictures that are licensed…so you think they are free, but in fact they aren’t and consequently you’ll get Getty Images or some other company emailing you about getting money from your site because you are using an image you thought was free. In my opinion, that’s not a sound approach to dealing with this problem. The best approach is to take your own pictures. You own the copyright, because you took the picture. And this isn’t hard to do in the age of camera phones. Best of all, if we all do this, we can send a message to Getty Images and other such sites, as well as the photographers and artists who have employed them as collection agencies. By showing them that we can take our own pictures, we no longer need their services.
Copyright is an important issue. As a writer, I respect the effort that goes into a creative work and the desire to be compensated. In some ways, I wish there was a Getty images enforcing my rights as an author, especially when I find that one of my books has been uploaded on the web to be shared everywhere with no compensation coming my way. On the other hand, I also think penalizing someone for use of an image, when they’ve taken it down and there isn’t a repeated history of copyright violation is going overboard. While I’m certain the intention of Getty Images is to protect copyright and/or provide image solutions to people like myself, the penalization just discourages such solutions, because of the cost involved. Ironically, in their own disregard of others’ intentions, they perpetuate part of the problem they are seeking to eradicate. And sure they get some money out of it and they’ve taught me a lesson. But what they’ve also done is alienate me as a possible customer and their short term gain, for the artist and themselves, is just that: short term.
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