Hi Folks. Last week Lucid Studio had a bit of a strange situation and we thought we better let people out there know about it in case it happens to you.
On Friday we received a letter from 'Getty Images' stating that we had been identified as using an image from their catalogue without a valid licence. As a result they demanded that the image be taken down and we were to pay a large fine.
This came as a big surprise as we have never used any Getty images without a licence before. After a bit of an investigation into our records we discovered that the image in question we actually downloaded from flickr and was licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. We called Getty about the situation, indicated the flickr URL that we received image from, and hoped that Getty would be sensible enough to notice their mistake and take the issue up with the user that uploaded the image to flickr.
Getty were, in all fairness, very professional about the situation, they called back within 24 hours and removed their case against us.
I guess the purpose of this blog is for two things.
1. Don't think you can get away with snatching Getty images as they have image scanning technology in place to identify licence breaches.
2. As a web designer it is an important part of your work to log and manage the images you have used in your projects. If such a situation should arise you will be well equipped to identify and tackle the problem.
Be aware people!
On Friday we received a letter from 'Getty Images' stating that we had been identified as using an image from their catalogue without a valid licence. As a result they demanded that the image be taken down and we were to pay a large fine. This came as a big surprise as we have never used any Getty images without a licence before. After a bit of an investigation into our records we discovered that the image in question we actually downloaded from flickr and was licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. We called Getty about the situation, indicated the flickr URL that we received image from, and hoped that Getty would be sensible enough to notice their mistake and take the issue up with the user that uploaded the image to flickr.
Getty were, in all fairness, very professional about the situation, they called back within 24 hours and removed their case against us.
I guess the purpose of this blog is for two things.
1. Don't think you can get away with snatching Getty images as they have image scanning technology in place to identify licence breaches.
2. As a web designer it is an important part of your work to log and manage the images you have used in your projects. If such a situation should arise you will be well equipped to identify and tackle the problem.
Be aware people!