D
Deleted member 30535
Guest
The company I work for was recently contacted by Getty Images who informed us that we had displayed one of their images on our company web site without a licence to do so, and to cough up over £900 for the privilege of doing so.
When I examined the image in their letter, two things became apparent:
(1) The image was no longer on our website, but more worryingly,
(2) Our web site was using syndicated and managed content being served up through a well respected third party company on behalf of a US software company, with offices in the UK. We have no control over the content, it's managed by the Software company.
We responded to Getty to inform of this fact and gave them the details of both the software company (we're a partner of theirs) and the content manager. We thought that would be the end of it. But no.
Getty responded to say that we are responsible for all images displayed on our site even if it is served up by a third party. They offered us a 15% discount on the licence fee to settle the matter.
Other than the second word being "off", the implications for this is quite astounding.
Even though a third party served up a non-licensed image through our web page, we're still liable for a licence.
In theory this means that AVF's policy of allowing linked images to say Photobucket etc, could open them up to a claim like we had from Getty Images.
Is this SOPA by the back door?
When I examined the image in their letter, two things became apparent:
(1) The image was no longer on our website, but more worryingly,
(2) Our web site was using syndicated and managed content being served up through a well respected third party company on behalf of a US software company, with offices in the UK. We have no control over the content, it's managed by the Software company.
We responded to Getty to inform of this fact and gave them the details of both the software company (we're a partner of theirs) and the content manager. We thought that would be the end of it. But no.
Getty responded to say that we are responsible for all images displayed on our site even if it is served up by a third party. They offered us a 15% discount on the licence fee to settle the matter.
Other than the second word being "off", the implications for this is quite astounding.
Even though a third party served up a non-licensed image through our web page, we're still liable for a licence.
In theory this means that AVF's policy of allowing linked images to say Photobucket etc, could open them up to a claim like we had from Getty Images.
Is this SOPA by the back door?
