MicrostockGroup

Please, what is DMCA?

It's worth a try, Sean.  The agency owes me at least $1,000 in actual damages and counting.  I'm still adding up the total.  If I'd been smart and registered the copyrights, my bill/lawsuit would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This infringement is that serious, and my attorney agrees.  I want to try on my own before asking her to step in.    

DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act  The takedown notice is what you send people who infringe on your copyrights.

I'm the uploader and owner.  I want my images removed from my own portfolio.  I stopped giving them permission to sell licenses almost a year ago, so they are profiting off my work without my permission.  Guess I should have been more specific.  LOL

Oh, well, yes.  How do you "stop giving them permission"?  Did you close your account?  How do you account for losses?  You can't really say, because I sold X here at $.25, then I didn't sell it for $100 over on Getty.

Are you saying you think you're entitled to the percentage of royalties IS would have kept?  I'm just trying to figure out where the "damages" come from this situation.

I think Sean's right, too, which is why I'm sending the DMCA in consultation with my attorney.  If they ignore me, I'll have to escalate it by retaining her full services.

The omission of dealing directly with the removal of individual images in an agreement doesn't mean we're giving an agency permission to license individual images until our account is terminated.  Nowhere in any of the various agency's contracts does it state they have the right to continue licensing our images after we have removed them from their websites.  Some do allow for grace periods providing them with time to remove images upon termination, but none of them say they can do whatever they want with our images after we have removed them.  That's because we still retain the right to determine which images the agency licenses or doesn't license.

Ask your attorney about the discovery period, to register law, upon discovery of someone infringing. Maybe too late now, but you can register images after the fact. Some people miss this, and if you have an attorney he should have known it. (odd I read it was 90 days in one place now I see 30 days on the US Copyright office pages?)

(3) are not submitted to the Copyright Office in proper form within the earlier of —

(A) 3 months after the first publication of the work; or

(B) 1 month after the copyright owner has learned of the infringement.[/u]

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html

As for the $1000 based on what Getty sends out in their letters. Thanks for the huge laugh. Asking for $1000 and getting a cent are two far different concepts. Yes, some people may roll over and pay Getty but many just tell them where the door is. Someone on Alamy said she filed something like 2000 letters to people infringing and got responses from a tiny number, got payment from even less.

Some interesting reading on the infamous Getty Letters:  http://extortionletterinfo.com/

Good Luck. Please come back with the results of your expedition. If someone wins a case like this it will change the way agencies ignore artists requests for take down, and you can be a hero to hundreds of Microstock Artists! All it takes is some case law and agencies around the world will start to answer email and take down images that people have requested be removed for months and months. Add to that, that as soon as one agency loses one of these decisions in court, all the rest will follow.

Good Luck, Best Wishes!

Thanks, Warren!  That's what I needed to know!  :-)  I wouldn't think it's any different today.

My attorney said it's too late to register the copyrights for this particular situation, but believe me, I will be registering them ASAP before submitting them to anymore agencies.  Lesson definitely learned!