How would you like a threatening letter and a demand for payment of several thousand pounds through your door? That's exactly what has happened to several of our clients over the years who mistakenly placed copyrighted images on their websites.
How would you like a threatening letter and a demand for payment of several thousand pounds through your door? That's exactly what has happened to several of our clients over the years who mistakenly placed copyrighted images on their websites.
The internet is huge, right? Someone finding an image on your website that hasn't had the correct license bought for it is a million-to-one chance, right? Trying to keep track of copyrighted images on the internet would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, right?
Wrong. And over the years, we've had a few clients become a cropper to using copyrighted images on their sites. In all cases, the images were provided by their previous website designers, so the clients themselves were not necessarily to blame, although it's them who ended up with the invoices for £thousands from Getty Images.
Getty Images is the largest supplier of stock images in the world and also own dozens of subsidiaries such as iStockPhoto, JupiterImages, Stock.Xchng and many more. If we or your previous website designers or suppliers have used stock photography on your website, the chances are the images will be licensed by Getty. Getty Images use a third party firm called PicScout, who provide a very clever web scanning service that tracks down unauthorised and unlicensed images on websites across the world. Getty's largest competitor, Corbis Images, also use PicScout.
Once PicScout has found an image that hasn't been licensed, you will then get a final demand letter for copyright infringement request from Getty, including damages against the copyright holder which are often around £1,000 per image. And yes, we can confirm that this does actuality happen; it's not just a rumour!
So the moral of the story is to always make sure the images on your website are correctly licensed. With royalty-free prices from places like iStockPhoto starting from just a few dollars per image, there's no reason why anyone would need to risk a letter from Getty.
And yes, all of Esvelte's websites quotations include the use of stock photography in the price, so you can sleep easy.
You have been warned! ;-)
Looking for web design Sheffield, South Yorkshire? Get in touch today on 0114 383 0880.