You are likely here because you have just received an email from a company called Copytrack claiming that you have used stolen images on your website. They want you to pay damages for this. It is natural to be sceptical of this email, the internet is a bit of a wild west at times. Is this letter a legitimate threat and should you do anything about it?
The answer is yes, Copytrack are a legitimate business. They function as a reverse image search engine for people who wish to stop people from using their images illegally. Assuming the website that contains the stolen image belongs to you, you should take this email very seriously. You have broken the law and how you handle this situation is very important. Do not worry though, it isn’t as bad as it seems.
Before you do anything, go to your website and delete the offending image. Keeping the image online will not help you one single bit, no matter what you decide to do. So I would advise you to eradicate all traces of this image. Then go through your entire image library and delete anything else that has the potential to cause more copyright infringements.
Should I Pay Copytrack The Money?
The legal language used in their initial letter can sound quite scary. If you are just a regular blogger and have made a very common mistake, the fee they are asking for to pay for damages may be more than you make in an entire year. I for one was in this situation when they contacted me about it.
So the big question you will be asking is, should I pay them? The answer depends on your website. How big is your website? Are you earning a lot of money from your website and does it get a large amount of traffic? It is going to be very hard for you to negotiate if you are running a successful business. Your traffic statistics are publicly estimated via Alexa, quite accurately at times. If you are getting 500k visitors per month, you can’t play the poor card. Does this mean you should pay?
Even though these emails seem like extortion, they are legally valid. If you have a lawyer, go straight to them, but there is little they can do if you are guilty. The only silver lining here is that the copyright holder is likely some photographer struggling to make a living, just like you. There is room to negotiate if you made a genuine mistake and can’t afford the cost. If you reach out and explain that you run a hobby website, they may be willing to drop the claim. They can’t draw blood from a stone!
If you are running a big website that works as a business and has employees, you may still be able to negotiate but chances are the person on the other end will see you as a cash cow. A business can be targeted much easier. This is why being a personal blogger with a small website is likely going to result in you being fairly safe.
Should You Ignore Copytrack Emails and Letters?
When I first got an email from them, my immediate reaction was to ignore it and hope the problem would go away. I read through forums and found help online. There were many examples of people who ignored them and after several threatening legal letters, the problem went away. Will this work for you? Maybe, if you live in the US, otherwise the company is perfectly capable and in their right to take you to court. The cost of the legal fees will more than likely outweigh the cost of paying the fine but then again, the cost of them taking you to court would likely outweigh the profit they would make. If you are just running a hobby site, they will lose more money taking you to court, so you are likely going to be safe.
After doing all the research, I decided that It was in my best interest to respond to the original email before things escalated. The blog in question was earning about $50 per month before hosting and other costs were taken away. The $1500 they wanted for the image could not be afforded. I didn’t have any money of my own to pay either. But I decided that It would be best to try and work it out. I could try and pay something as a way to recognize that I have done wrong and that I am sorry for it.
Contacting them was the best decision. We were able to work out a deal that I felt was fair and everyone was happy in the end. Looking back, I feel I could have probably ignored the emails and gotten away with it. There is no way to say for sure though.
How To Respond to the Extortion Letters
Extortion is not illegal, even though it sounds very threatening at times. You can be sure that the wording of all of these emails has been read over by countless lawyers to ensure so. If you chose to respond, responding with aggression will not help.
There are two reasons why you need to be calm. First is the initial letter you received was automated. It was done so because it detected that your website was illegally hosting images that you did not have a copyright license for.
The second reason is due to the fact that your email will be the first proper email in the conversation. A human will respond to your email. You do not want to have this person angry with you. Negotiation is optional after all. They will more than likely be understanding, but only if you are respectful. They have no obligation to be nice. If you decide to be a total ass and cause distress to the person on the other end. They may decide to close communication and come after you through the courts, so it is in your best interest to be respectful here, it costs you nothing.
The best way to respond is to explain your situation. Provide some metrics that show the traffic levels your site gets. Show some AdSense reports for the domain in question. Let the person see where you are. At the end of the day, the copyright holder wants damages for the item you stole. Your current financial situation doesn’t really matter, but the copyright holder is human too. They may be willing to listen to you and lower the amount of money they had originally asked for.
From what I could find on forums and other discussions. A large number of people were successful in getting the fee reduced after some negotiation. It may be hard if you do not do this regularly, but it is your only lifeline.
How Does Copytrack Work?
I only discovered how they work after the entire, highly stressful, process was over. Knowing how their business operates may help you out a much as it would have helped me.
Anyone can sign up to Copytrack. You upload your images and they will use their framework to find websites across the web that are using your images. When they find a match they will flag it for you to confirm. If you are happy that the image belongs to you, you can issue the request. This will trigger the first email to be sent to the person who owns the website.
From here Copytrack will take over all of the work. They handle the communication and all of the legal efforts. They will then take a chunk of the license fee money depending on how the situation goes. It’s great for the copyright owner because they do no work and can potentially catch people who steal their images. The critical thing to remember is there are normally just regular people behind the camera for those images. They could be amateur photographers who are sick and tired of people using their images without people paying. It isn’t entirely personal, so try be understanding too. Being understanding can make a big difference to how the situation plays out for you.
Need More Help?
I am not a legal professional, but in the time I spent desperately crawling the internet for any help I could get on this situation, I discovered a lot. I decided to write this document as I know it would have been a lot of help to me back when I got the email. Feel free to leave a comment below if you need extra help or have some questions. I will try to answer them all to help people out.
Q: If I remove the image, does that mean I don’t have to pay anymore?
Unfortunately not. They are looking for you to pay for the damages in the past. Removing the image isn’t going to solve the situation.
To me, it is totally a scam. Today, I got an email from them and they say that I am using a copyrighted image on my site. But I created that image with Canva graphic designer and free stock photo (Getty Images) they offer. How can I pay for an image provided by Canva?
I don’t know. I got an email from them today, for using a screenshot from a press release of a video game. The article was about the video game being released at the time in 2016. According to the video game publisher and developer, Square Enix, press is allowed to use their images from their press kit, as long as it is related to coverage of the game. Which we did. https://press.na.square-enix.com/Site/TermsAndConditions
I don’t understand why Square Enix would sue us, using Copytrack when they have their own lawyers? I checked out this WENN website related to Copytrack and they have images from Square Enix’s press kit. Wouldn’t the bigger issue be them issuing copyright infringement claims for press kits provided by another company?
We only ever used licensed images which we have purchased from istockphoto. Based on this, I think the email we received is a scam.
Totally disagree, copytrack is fully scan and fraud company, they will send you email for copystrike just to take picture randomly from anywhere. You Don’t have to respond them or pay. If you pay them one time they will blackmail you for asking money again and again.
This is pure fraud and extortion! These morons can’t defend themselves! The whole government is corrupt and lies under russia. It is best to send them to the German police. Let them do their work, not fart! They were already preparing a coup d’état in their country. Send these idiots to hell. Of course, they will sit down for a long time
Hi,
Thanks for the useful article. I experienced the same thing. However, I chose not to buy the license, but pay for the fine of 220 EUR. Same like some others, I didn’t remove the image from my server. I actually forgot to do it. Eventually, they’re back and they demanded 660 EUR. Is there a way out to this? Couldn’t afford the penalty. I’d rather abandon my site than paying for the penalty, to be honest. Any suggestions are much appreciated.
I have been emailed by Copytrack for a thumbnail picture I used of Judi Dench to accompany a blog I wrote about her comments on actors’ voices back in 2017. I immediately deleted the image and sent an apology saying that the image had no signalled copyright ownership when I used it. I didn’t really like it that much. I see I was naive, but I can’t find the picture I used on the Wenn Ltd site. There are 100s of pics of Judi Dench. I have contacted Copytrack and asked them for the site number on the Wenn website. They are threatening me with legal action if I don’t pay 300 euros in 3 days. The Wenn site says it has been hacked. You cannot contact them to find out as the contact pages are being flagged as dangerous by Bitdefender.
I just had the same thing happen as Roxanna with a NASA image I had used on my old blog in 2012. It is fully public domain (see links below). The WENN Rights International company is listed as claiming ownership. How can Copytrack be legitimate and try to pull something like this? I saw another similar post regarding a NASA image just a few days ago from someone on Twitter. I contacted the Twitter user and he told me his image was from the same NASA series as mine. He said he responded aggressively and then they dropped the claim,
I’m replying here in a new comment, since for some reason I can’t reply directly to Roxanna’s comment. I click on reply and nothing happens.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scoop_Marks_in_the_Sand_at_%27Rocknest%27.jpeg
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16469.html
Thanks!
Thanks Paul, I had not noticed this was an issue. The comment replies should be working correctly now.
As for your comment, it sounds like this may be something similar to copyright strikes on YouTube. They are not working hard enough to verify the copyright owner actually owns the copyright
I represent a small UK charity and the image we got sent an email about was on a PDF of a centre fold on our press page. The image was just incidental on the page where we had an articul written about us. We had been given permission to use the PDF by The Week Junior. They were not interested that we were a charity making no income from the website and that we had been given permission form the magazine. We paid the fine of 80 Euros in good faith and took the image down. This week they have issued another fine of 240 Euros because we did not remove the image of our server. I’m a volunteer not an IT whizz. Why wouldn’t they point that out at the time? ‘Remove the image from your website and your server’. Because that’s how they make their money. I find their actions despicable – but what should we do?
When you paid the first time, you would have bought a copyright license to use the image. You will need to refer to this and it should be ok. Copytrack is just an AI that finds the images, it doesn’t always know the legal side of things. Someone has made the mistake to pull the trigger on this one when you had already paid the fee. You should be fine if you explain the situation
Paying for an infringement would not buy you a “copyright licence” to use the image.
I am an artist myself and are really frustrated with the amounts of copyright infringements that I constantly find of my works, and am also considering using the services of Copytrack in order to chase down the illegal usage of my art, as its really hard to get people to take down an image they have not requested permission to use, it needs the weight of a legal threat to get any action.
It is my understanding that if Copytrack do successfully negotiate a payment on my behalf, that in no way would constitute a copyright licence to carry on using my image(s), but rather a payment for the potential usage of my image, a coipyright licence is something entirely different and would involve a separate negotiation surely ?
I paid the first fine and took the image down immediately, not knowing it was copyright infringement if I’ve asked the owner and supplied back links. Anyway. That’s been paid.
Now they are saying the image is still up somewhere (even though I took it off the blog) and are saying I still have to pay. Is there a way to completely delete the image from my site? I thought I did but they’re saying I still need to delete from somewhere. Or do I just ignore this? Thanks for your help!
When you pay them, this should have given you the copyright to use this image. I would bring up the original payment with them to see if it can be worked out.
To answer the question about deleting the image, yes there is a way to do this. Removing the image from the blog post or whatever web page is not enough. If you can still access the image through a browser, then it is still available to the public. You will need to use your CMS to delete it fully. If you do not have the ability to do this, you will need to FTP into the server and delete the image.
There are options when you pay CT for an infringement. No future use (delete image immediately) or purchase a 1 year license.
They are harrasing me into paying for an image that NASA has put in the public domain. How can their client claim ownership for an image that is legally in the public domain? And also, how can the onus of proving this fall on me and not on them to verify that their clients are not making false claims? Should I sue them?
If you are correct and someone has claimed copyright over an image that they do not own then they are in deeper trouble than you are. I am not sure you can sue them as you are not the copyright holder of the image but maybe its best to speak to a legal professional for help on this one.
I just received an email from them with I am going to ignore.
I have been a commercial photographer’s agent for 35 years and have spent a lot of my time contacting brands for non-authorized COMMERCIAL usages of my photographers’ stock. I am not new to this game and I am very respectful of copyright and of artists who make a living by selling their images..
As a hobby I have a non-commercial blog which does not make me any money, on the contrary. I have roughly 10 visits a day, or not even. And I never plan to monetize it either.
I have posted hundred of photographs that I have taken myself and in spite of the fact that I have written my name all all over them, I still find them used by other bloggers. I have never asked for money and in certain cases I have just contacted the blogger and asked them for a photo credit, or given them the option to take down the photograph if the image was used in an out of context way. I have never had a problem with this because everyone has been in good faith.
This is why I am surprised by the aggressive scammy ways of Copytrack. I obviously found the shot online and it did not have a photo credit at the time.it is NOT a professional shot, it looks like a holiday shot. I would have taken it down immediately had I know it was a problem or if the person wanted to be paid for the use.
I deleted the post immediately. It makes me angry that they would ask to pay retroactively because had I been contacted by their “client” WENN, I would have deleted the shot on the spot rather than pay usages. The shot is part of a post with seven other pictures, it is a tiny shot, it is not even a main shot. I have been told to pay 110 euros which an astronomical amount to ask for such a small usage on a non-commercial blogpost.
I have looked on a bunch of other forums and the general advice is “ignore them” “scammers” etc
I am going to ignore their email and block them.
I am confused and worried about my situation. I posted a photo in my gallery that was on a webpage with the article about the actress. There were 4 other posted from this site and they didn’t mention those photos despite them all being in the same gallery directlory. All of the photos were on that sites. I deleted the photo and replied back with an email saying I deleted it but I pointed out it was posted on a webpage with the link to it. They emailed me back saying it didn’t matter where it was posted it’s my responsibility to obtain a copyright for anything posted on my site. I thought if it were posted for the public it was okay to repost them. Interviews are frequently are posted with it and people use those photos on their site.
I am in the US, make no money from my site and my only income is disability. I can’t afford the £250-500 they are trying to make me pay. But obviously I don’t want to get sued either
It sounds like you have indeed used a copyright protected image without a license. You might see the same image on other websites but those websites could have paid for the license and are legally allowed to use it. If the image file lived on your domain, it is up to you to make sure you have the legal right to use it. I would suggest you try negotiate with them though if your financial situation is not good. I doubt they will see the benefit of taking someone to court who they know isn’t going to be able to afford the fine.
I also got 3 emails and now they send the letters by post too. They tell me I used a picture, but they only show me the slide of the powerpoint presentation, which contains 3 pictures. They don’t even clarify which picture it is? This is going on from 2020 already. If they also send letters by post, should I be worried? I haven’t removed the powerpoint slide yet since I last googled it everyone said it was a scam. I can remove the slide and ignore them and see what happens?
Same here. First thing I wanted to write in a reply was very rood (you probably understand what I mean if you have received letter from them) as I knew there were no copyright issues with it, but as it was published 3-4 years ago, it took me some time to find it on pexels where it is completely free and no license is required. Now I have another question: “Do they even check if the request completed by the photographer is legit and is there a way to sue them for sending spammy automatic emails without even checking those details?” It really made me angry and now I’d like to know how I can sue them back!
I’m with those who say to ignore them completely.
My first action when I got the first warning was to remove the image, it was a low-resolution image found on many Pinterest profiles, so what about them? are they all thieves? can’t be.
It was a low-quality image of a small beach taken probably by a couple of holidaymakers, and definitely not by a professional photographer, they obviously looked for a way to get back some of their holidays expenses and found those scams(COPYTRACK) who are exploiting the law just to make some easy money out of the anxiety they cause to their victims.
My second action was to contact my lawyer and friend(lucky me), he looked at it, read it, laughed, and told me, do you really worry about this?
That’s nothing, there is nothing official in it other than a thread which is illegal, we just ignore it, we don’t answer to emails, never come in touch with them, and let them do whatever they want, if they come after you with a lawyer then we will come in touch and settle the issue without any courts.
If you pay them now, they will know that you are an easy victim and who can guarantee that they will not blackmail you again with the same or another photo?
We can prove that your income is very low, the page where the image was had only one visitor for the period of supposed infringement, so you have nothing to worry.
We will ask them for a copyright license and if they don’t have one we will suit them and we’ll ask compensation for the stress they caused you, as this picture seems to belong to many owners as it is spread all over the internet.
If they have the guts and money to spoil let them come.
And the last sentence is mine, Fuck Europe, the way you go with your stupid laws, your citizens will not even be able to breathe in some years, I live for the day when the German 4th Reich will be dissolved.
eff Europe? couple of questions:
1. are you from the good ol’ USofA?
2. heard of Pixsy?
if you don’t know, Pixsy is a US company doing the same as Copytrack.
might also check out the actual image copywrite usage rules for your geographical location, you will be surprised at what you can use (and not use) without seeking permission. for info:
Copyright and Fair Use/Fair Dealings (these rules also apply to most counties, please check):
Effectively you can use photos that are subject to copyright without having to ask permission if their use is for:
news reporting
criticism or review
parody or satire
personal research or study
people with disabilities
copying by libraries and more (such as legal advice).
This is known as Fair Use or Fair Dealings, depending on which country you are from. By all means use Google to search for “photo copyright fair use or fair dealings.”
if your lawyer/friend deals in copywrite infringements then you are a lucky one. if not, take note of the above.
please remember, if you use an image that is not yours for non-commercial purposes, it is good manners to accredit the image owner and link back to their webpage. for commercial use, I really do suggest contacting the image owner first to avoid what you have been through.
cheers
Bruno,
Of course, these criminals have nothing. But we have real evidence that they were engaged in extortion of money. And also the transfer of military data to Russia.Sit down with Merkel, the same trash as they This shit can’t do anything. Either they will flee to Russia or will sit in the same cell with the refugees. They fuck these stupid motherfuckers
I have just got a letter from this company Copytrack saying a photo on my web site is an infringement of Copyright. Yet i get the photo from an English web design company in 2015. I have emailed the web design company.
In the letter it states the owner of the photo is an Italian Photograph Journalist Moreno Soppelsa. I have reached out to him to find out if this photo is infact a copyright photo, am awaiting his reply
I will not be speaking to this Copytrack company nor will i ring them or email them.
They as far as i am concerned can go shove it. If they come after me they will be hit with such a big law suit they won’t know what’s hit them.
I thank you for this helpful work you do! I recieved copytrack bully emails, I have contacted the owner of the photograph, we agreed on payment and I paid her 50€ immidiately. Unless, copy track still wants 621€ which is laugable for me for the kind of picture. The owner of the picture took the money and said that I shoud talk to them. None of my explanations or replies are known. I just get automatic threats. So in this point, I am willing to persue law suit (in whitch conuntry that would be – I have no idea) but lets get judge to decide the real value of the picture. I was appologetic and felt sorry also a bit scared, but this makes me really angry. It is such a speculation to me. What do you say?
you have written permission from the copyright owner. Send this to copytrack and they will back down since you have the legal right to use thst image now
I have a fan page for a deceased celebrity that makes zero profit and I recently received multiple emails from them about the same photo. First of all, the image was uploaded to Instagram (along with 8,000 other fan pages for this person) and it’s just a widget that shares photos from Instagram, I think I know better than to straight upload a photo that doesn’t belong to me on my website but I didn’t realize my widget would get me in trouble. Anyway, they are trying to pop me for an image featured on an Instagram widget on the website. At first, I explained that it was a widget. I did not personally upload the photo to my website. The responder did not care. He just replied with instructions on how to pay. This time I explained that it’s a fan page and I make zero profit. Waiting for their next response. So frustrating that the same people that killed this woman (paparazzi/photographers) are still trying to profit off of her corpse.
You may need to go over the report. If the image is hosted on Instagram and you are using a widget, you have not made a copy of an image and have not breached copyright. Check the widget is not making copies of the images and storing them on your server
As a person who has my photos stolen all the time off of my website by people who copy my designs and use my photos to sell their knock offs or use them in their advertising to link back to their own website, I find some of these comments appalling. Stop using other peoples photos without their permission, you are breaking the law and deserve to be sued. Go take your own photos, copytrack isn’t a scam, they are protecting peoples rights and property.
I am an affiliate of one company and I used a photo from their website because they emailed me that I can.
Now I get an e-mail that I infringe copyright.
The link under the photo on my website leads directly to the product of the photo owner. Exactly the same product which is shown in the picture.
How did they calculate the loss of the owner of the photo rights when customers came to him from my website to buy the product?
This is some paranoia!
If you have permission, copytrack allow you to provide proof and it should make them back down
P.S. How best to proceed? Any advice on how to avoid this in the future? Any Websites that one can use to lesson the chance that one inadvertently uses a Copyrighted image? Thanks in advance from my team and anyone else who might want to avoid such events.
I’m a volunteer on the administrative side for my Churches website and Facebook page and this just happened to us. We take great care to only use “royalty free” images from reputable sites. Apparently we missed one. Their correspondence with us has been very vague about what image and when, where. We requested more information and they replied that they would only provide the specific details in a court setting. From my best interpretation, they’re referring to the “Metatag” (?) information about the photo, That part I can somewhat understand, but not providing us with basic information such as when the photo first appeared and what site? This is needed for us to remedy the situation – past, present, and future.
I’m glad I found your post as it helped me to understand whether it’s legit (though still a lousy business practice).
I received the mail from copytrack from Berlin. They want money for the picture. Perhaps I used that picture two days, and I delated it. Nowhere I saw that picture is from someone. Please advice.
If it was accidental and you corrected it immediately, I do not think they can come after you for it.
Scam all the way.
Ignore, don’t even reply.
They remind us of those fair guide companies in Mexico that claimed you advertised in their “expo guides”. Scammers in the same line of”business”.
Don’t let yourself be intimidated, they have zero legal credibility despite what their accomplice “blogger” here claims.
I don’t work for them at all. If you break copyright law, the owner is entitled to sue you for damages. It is a simple fact. Whether copytrack will come after you is a different story and entirely depends on the website. What I am trying to explain to people is that if you are a profitable business, there’s no chance you will get away with this. If you are a small blogger with no money, why would they bother taking you to court. They are entitled to and they may do it, who knows! I am just trying to share what I learned from the experience without advising someone to do something bad.
I am an network marketer for 13 years with the same US company. This network company doesn’t grant anyone without written permission to take pictures of their products and after that claim a copyright on them. As a distributor we are not allowed to take any photos of their products without their permission. So, if one’s not a distributor, I know for sure they will never authorize anyone to take photos of their products and claim a copyright on it.
Now, Copytrack claims me an amount for one of such a picture that I used on my site. To me, the picture belongs to my network company. I asked them to deliver the license or permission of their client that proves he may claim a copyright, but they never do and keep on writing me that I should pay.
Is this legitimate?
They are known to opt for pressure and to bully people into paying. It is probably cheaper and easier to just bully people and not resort to legal action. If they are wrong and are forcing you to pay them, you should see if it is possible to file a counter suit against them for racketeering. They are threatening you to pay up for something they do not own. This is illegal and if they are hounding you to pay them for something you own the copyright for, absolutely come down on them like a tonne of bricks to make them learn a lesson
I recently received an email from Copytrack with a shot of a photo they said I used – I don’t remember the photo & it’s not on my computer, I checked. They also sent a link to where they say it was on my website from March 2020. The link they gave me took me to my website but the photo they mention isn’t there so I don’t know how they know it was. If I did have it up, I must have had it up for a very short time, as I haven’t updated my website in 8 months. I don’t understand if they saw it in March 2020 why I’m I only getting this email now? They want to charge me Euro 300 but after 12 months, I think it’s a scam. I asked them to prove who it came from & the only reply was that their email is my last warning. Not sure what I should do, I don’t want to get sued
They scrape the web and find sites that are using the images. They then present it to the copyright owner for them to approve or reject. Copytrack may have found the image many months ago but the person who owns the copyright did not approve it until recently. If you can prove the image was never on the website and there is no record for them to prove it was, you should be able to ignore the messages
I living in Europe. Got their email. But in my case they are scams. They pointed me on particular picture, which is my at all. How they would prove picture is stolen online? I am thinkg to suit them since they are just sending with some kind of guess.
I believe a human who believes they own the picture has to confirm. If this is wrong, you could most definitely fight back against someone claiming they own copyright over your own original content
I received email from copytrack. It’s demand is 220 euro.
But my site monthly income is 110 use dollars.
I m from Pakistan.
So what I do.
You can try negotiate
Hello, I am from Pakistan too and facing the same problem. How did you sort out this matter.
Hi, I just got an email on the copyright of copytrack. they asked me to pay 300 euros. Where the income I get from using these photos doesn’t generate that much. I actually accidentally used it.
my location in Indonesia – Southeast Asia. Here, the laws regarding copyright are not as strict as in Europe or the US.
What do you think? should i just ignore it?
When it comes to copyright, it is not about how much money you made from the image but how much the owner lost. I am not sure how they prove this and you may be able to ask for some proof on this and negotiate from there
So my question is l don’t use any images l don’t pay for and l don’t have a website ? So how do l know what image they think l have used incorrectly. I don’t want to engage with them yet for fear of extortion . Surely if they are asking for money they need to show proof or what they are accusing you of ?
Their initial email should provide proof. A URL or some source of the infringement. If they can’t provde you illegally used your image, then you owe them nothing.
What if the image was on your college portfolio that literally you have abandoned for like 5 years!? I gave up on design and just have it sitting there and literally it gets no traffic and I make no money at all on this…I ignored the first email but now I’m getting stressed about it….I took the project down
There may be some time limits on this depending on where you live but i think the idea is, if you broke the law 5 years ago, you still broke the law. I know it seems weird to say it like this when you simply published an image somewhere but this is how serious copytrack take the matter. Deleting the offending image should always be the first thing you do.
“Extortion is not illegal”
– That sentence, from the article above, pretty much sums up the article as a whole. Garbage.
Yes, extortion in nearly all of its manifestations is – indeed – illegal. Of course that is not to say what Copytrak does in extortion, but to the next point …
“So the big question you will be asking is, should I pay them? The answer is yes, but not just yet.”
– Actually, the answer is no. Never pay them. Never respond to them. If you are just a regular blogger who accidentally used an image on a webpage – and that’s it – ignore the letters. They will NOT come after you in court because they will know the actual damages they could win would pale in the costs associated with taking you to court. (which they would have to do in your home country. Copytrak is in Germany.) Unless you directly profited from the image (i.e. sold it directly) then damages/costs awarded would be pittance.
Just quietly remove the image. That’s all you need to do. Don’t even respond to them. They’ll send a bunch more messages, probably say they’ve outsourced the “debt” to a company in your country. And then they’ll just stop when its clear they cannot threaten a response from you.
Speaking from experience.
Hey man, im not a lawyer. I am just a blogger who got caught using an image by copytrack and I am trying to help others out as the experience had me quite stressed and worried. There is no need to be such a dick to make yourself feel smart. Just be nice and try to help others out instead of being aggressive.
Hello Dan,
I found your content in the process of dealing with them. It seems you did not do much research in writing this. But the bulk of complaints are Copytrack is targeting a lot of people who did not steal content. My own case is a fairuse image they clearly do not own. But they have also claimed public domain and images made available to media are theirs. I see in your case, you did take Ween’s content. I would like to see an elaboration on that In terms of what they wanted from you and what you decided to pay. On top of that are you still paying them. Did you know that it was copyrighted content?
You need to issue a correction, as extortion is a federal crime, at least in the US. I can’t see how other countries would not also consider it a crime. People who did not steal from clients of Copytrack should not have to pay, and certainly not have to invest time on a false complaint.
I didnt write this article to deal with false positives. If this is a false positive, you do not need to defend yourself as their system has clearly made a mistake.
It’s absolutely not a scam. I use them all the time and have successfully recovered a lot of money from images stolen from me. If you live in a country where the legal system is not robust for IP infringements then you might get away with it. However if you live in a country with a good legal system, Copytrack will pursue you and almost certainly will win. The advice in this article is very good. Don’t ignore them, negotiate. If you are a small blog then it’s unlikely you will have to pay a huge amount. If you are a commercial business, and have stolen a photographer’s images, then expect to pay for them. Moral of the story, unless otherwise stated, all images on the Internet are protected under copyright law and a lot of photographers now have the tools to fight back.
The thing you do not take into account, is the false positives. Which is why I am here, and I am not the only one. Copytrack claimed I used an image of Wenn’s. But, it does not belong to them. They have targeted people using fair use & public domainimages (in one case an image taken by the White House).
As someone who has to battle copyright, I understand the pain of having my content stolen. I have filed more of my share of DMCAs. But, I don’t want people who had nothing to do with that theft harrased, especially when they can find me to air their grevences. I won’t use Copytrack based on my experience with them. They are unyielding and do not bother to read a response. You are, as far as they are concerned in the wrong, no one there bothered to verify if you are wrong. They want a licences or payment. No other options for proof, or oversight to make sure they are correct.
The ends do not justify the means.
What happens if you get a complaint of infringement from Copytrack when you just happen to be the rightful owner or the IPR? Will they supply details for the other party?
Yes, they will provide you the information of the copyright holder they have for this image. You may find someone else has claimed your IPR as their own which might be a handy win for you
For me, it’s obvious: it’s a scam. The picture I used was published for reuse (we are talking about a 150×150 pixel mugshot image). This is the 10th time someone calls and sends letters and it’s really annoying. I recommend not to answer.