Guide For Notified Parties

A lot of people think that photos found on google and social media are “free”. Unfortunately, that is not true. Google only shows images from other websites that the owners uploaded the images to. So downloading an image off of google and uploading it to your website or social media profile is illegal and considered misuse. Images on social media profiles are owned by the profile. So downloading and reuploading their images, without proper license, is illegal.

You are not exempted from the law just because you didn’t know that what you were doing was illegal. Illegal use of copyright protected images gives the owner the right to some form of compensation.

Removing the image is a great start. This does, however, not change the fact that the image was uploaded and published illegally and without the owner's permission. Since you have infringed the owner's copyright, the owner is entitled to compensation for the misuse.

If you hired people to make sure everything was up to par, we suggest you contact them and take the matter up with them. Hopefully, you have arranged things so that whomever vetted/set the site up for you can be held liable for malpractice. Regardless, you are the owner of the domain that is illegally hosting/have illegally hosted our client’s content, so you are the one on the hook.

Essentially, the judicial process is set up so that we have to deal with you, so the matter(s) we are contacting you about is between us, our client, and you. If you think someone else can be held responsible, then that doesn’t involve us, since it is a matter between them and you.

People own the copyrights to what they create, watermark or not. Watermarks are a safety measure some content creators use to protect their work, kind of like how people lock their cars to prevent them from getting stolen. If a car is stolen, whether or not it was locked is entirely besides the point in terms of determining theft; the same thing applies to images and watermarks.

Fees aren’t created to permit people to retroactively pay for what they have stolen. Fees are there as a deterrent to breaking certain rules. If you think the fee is much higher than the legal means of getting an image, that simply means the fee is doing what it is supposed to do.

No you can’t. The content is illegally used and illegal behaviour does not get a “go-ahead” after a punishment (such as a fee) has been handled.

It is possible to settle an agreement with the content’s owner regarding continued use, but that is entirely up to our client. We work to protect them and their interests. If they are willing to settle for an arrangement where you just “retroactively pay” for use of the content, we can help set that up. But, again, that is entirely up to the content’s owner.

Once you have paid and removed the illegal content, the matter is settled. So long as you don’t engage in such behaviour again, you shouldn’t face any further issues.

The claim is calculated based on relevant national copyright law as well as market standards.