Well today I got an ole' snail mail from Getty Images legal department. Apparently, a site I owned had a small thumbnail that was a Getty image that I was unauthorized to use.
The site the image is on is like 4 years old so I have no clue or remember where the image came from. Anyways... they don't care. They told me in the letter to take the image down and send them $1000 for infringement. I get a 10% discount if I pay within 14 days. If I don't pay... collection agency then legal action...
Anyways, this is just a warning to save people headache. Supposedly, they are sending these letters out on mass scale! Andrew posted about this on a thread on site point a few months earlier. I read it then and thought nothing of it... but it hits home when it shows up in your mailbox.
If you have been copy or even PS'ing getty or photodisc images I suggest you swap them out cus some people have been getting hit for over $20K. They also don't care about the "I had some Indian guy design this excuse". They are coming after everyone hard. Even hitting mom-n-pop business who have no clue how to design a website and basically putting them out of business. They are using picscout to scan servers. They base it $1K per image. Luckily, I just had 1, 75X75 px thumbnail...
What is scary about this is an affiliate network creatives could contain one of these images and if you host it... guess who is fucked!
I don't know if I'm going to pay it, have my lawyer send a response, or what yet. Still reading up and researching the whole thing.
To me it seems like major legal extortion to do this and not send just a C&D first.
How to avoid legal demands and trouble with Getty Images
90 page long thread here
Also, if you need stock images go here:
stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site
They are all free there and you'll ahve nothing to worry about.