What would make more sense is to figure out what paperwork is required to fight infringement, then do that yourselves.

A lot of the processes are routine (i.e., DMCA notice, cease/desist letter/etc) - and could save $$$. The only reason you'd really need the lawyer is if you were going to pursue it (i.e., suing) - but then you'd be looking at lots of $$$$$ for a good one - and better to do a class action type of thing as opposed to an individual by individual case.

Plus paper clips, stationary, ink jet refills and of course a liquid lunch. 

I know Sean's reply was tongue in cheek but he has a good point. It would probably take an entire legal team to handle just the participants of this forum alone.

I made this suggestion before and will say it again:

Copyright holders can initially set up a GOFUNDME account and appoint some trustees including a reputable lawyer to manage the money, in trust. The trustees will determine how the money should be used, including appointing attorneys and expenses.

The legal fees can be paid out of the trust money.

A percentage of the money recovered will go back to the trust fund.

If we pool the efforts together, there will be a defense fund available for the future.

Good luck with that

There is no economy of scale for the lawyer to make the work significantly less for handling a large number of low-value claims.

There's no class action possibility (in the US) for contributors whose work has been used without, or in violation of the terms of, a license

Given that, there's no sense in trying to pool resources to pay a lawyer.

The fundamental problem is that each violation is a small value item even if in total, the sum of all violations is large.

The only way this will change is with very expensive licenses (which is not the direction the business is moving in) or very large statutory fines for violations, regardless of the actual commercial loss.

It's the economics of microstock licenses that makes this situation hard to fight.

And that doesn't even deal with the issue of what list of countries are you going to pursue legal fights? Violators and contributors are all over the globe...

Write this off like "shrinkage" in retail. It's a cost of doing business.

There is no economy of scale for the lawyer to make the work significantly less for handling a large number of low-value claims.

There's no class action possibility (in the US) for contributors whose work has been used without, or in violation of the terms of, a license

Given that, there's no sense in trying to pool resources to pay a lawyer.

The fundamental problem is that each violation is a small value item even if in total, the sum of all violations is large.

The only way this will change is with very expensive licenses (which is not the direction the business is moving in) or very large statutory fines for violations, regardless of the actual commercial loss.

It's the economics of microstock licenses that makes this situation hard to fight.

And that doesn't even deal with the issue of what list of countries are you going to pursue legal fights? Violators and contributors are all over the globe...

Write this off like "shrinkage" in retail. It's a cost of doing business.

Could not agree More.

Looks like there's already lawyers doing this idea I am talking about.

https://www.pixsy.com/
https://www.copytrack.com/pricing/

Anyone tried them before

Some people have reported using either of these on the Alamy forum, for RM files.

It would be quite difficult to use them with RF/micro, as they monitor all of your images (or whatever portion you choose to give them) and find all uses and send you a list, and from these results, you need to identify misuses, which is difficult with RF, especially if you sell from various RF sources.

It's possible (?) that you might have to register your files with whatever US agency you do that with first, which is an added expense if you live in a country where that's not necessary.

Bear in mind that some agencies contractually require you to pass suspected misuses to them first - to check if they images have been sold, but not reported yet, or there is a mistake (we think they haven't sold but they have) and so that they can get their percentage. There have been cases, apparently, where contributers have gone after alleged misusers with all guns blazing and they were, in fact, using the files legitimately, having bought them, which as you can imagine p*ssed them off o end. The only two I have experience of, Alamy and iS, both require that. You'd need to look at the contracts of whichever agencies you sell through.