Copyright infringement via Permission Machine, acting on behalf of Alamy

[hughe]

Many thanks AndyJ. Although there is not a copy of the page on the Wayback Machine, I do have a copy of the code which I can produce if necessary.

[hollidb95]

Hi all,
Really found this all a useful and interesting read.

I've had a similar email but direct from Alamy reading like this:

==========================
Hi

We have seen that you are currently using one or more images from our collection on your website. Alamy is one of the leading picture agencies in the world and we exclusively represent the imagery in question.

We're writing to establish if you have a valid license for the usage in question, for example directly from the photographer or your creative design agency. Please send us a copy so we can validate it and close this enquiry.

It may be possible that you have not been granted permission to use the imagery or hold a valid license. If this is the case, then your use would potentially constitute what is known as a copyright infringement. In our experience we have not found one case in over six years that was a genuine attempt to defraud Alamy or the photographer. Images are usually added to sites incorrectly believing them to be free to use (for example copying a story from a newspaper or copying and pasting an image found on Google), which may be what has happened here.

It is our image/s AD4787.jpg on your domain barryholliday.org.uk.

Here is a screenshot of one of the uses:

[screenshot showing image of HM Treasury building]

Here is our original image:

[image of HM Treasury building]

It's important to remember that images are copyright-protected from the moment of creation and that our photographers make their living from the sale and licensing of the images. We have a duty of care to ensure our contributors are paid fairly for their work, so we have partnered with Fairlicensing by Pixray who crawl the web to look for uses of the images we represent, and they present us with the results that they find.

We ask that you remove the imagery immediately from your site if you do not hold a valid license or permission to use it. However, removal of the imagery does not resolve the possible infringement and you will still need to pay for the prior use without permission to remedy the copyright breach.

The settlement is £440 which breaks down as follows:

- The missed license fee and compensation for not obtaining prior consent £250
- The costs of creating the dossier (this is the internet scan, creating a case, validating contact details) £150
- The costs for recovery and communication £40 (this is shown as an Admin fee)

If you settle within 7 days, we offer a 15% discount which reduces it to £374 as it’s important that we get a payment to our contributor as soon as possible.

To make the payment, please log into fairlicensing.alamy.com using your case ID PI0CVU and your PIN 275410 to settle this claim. In the portal you can see more details of the case, you can upload a license if you have one, and there are answers to common questions, more information about Alamy as well as the checkout itself where the payment is made. Once you have made the payment, you will be covered for the online use that we have found, and the case will be closed.

Regards

Michaela
Infringements Team
==========================

Based on what I have read here I have sent the following reply:

==========================

REPLYING WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dear Michaela,
As requested I have removed the image in question from my site, and this was done immediately upon reading your email.

As you suggest the image was found using an internet search and is of a public building and and so is reasonably believed to be in the public domain and free from copyright and so any use was not malicious or flagrant.

I request a full breakdown of the costs and rationale used to arrive at the fee you have detailed in your email.

The license for this image would have been £31.99 for use on a website, and so a claim of £440 is unreasonably extortionate. The cost of a pre-written email and a screenshot are at best an hour of admin time.

I therefore offer a figure of £63.98 in full and final settlement of the matter, comprised of £31.99 to account for lost profit in the form of a license and £31.99 in respect of the minor administration of sending me an email, representing a 100% increase in the potential loss of earnings, which I'm sure you'll agree is reasonable especially given I have removed the image and it's use was innocent and not an intentional copyright infringement.

Many thanks,
Barry

==========================

I hope you'll agree with what I've attempted here, I will keep you all updated with any progress.

Stay safe all,
Barry

[AndyJ]

Hi Barry,

Welcome to the forum.

Your reply is spot on. It is interesting to see that Alamy are now dealing with these cases themselves. This used to be how it was done before the claims management companies like Permission Machine came along, so perhaps Alamy have learnt that they can make more money by cutting out the middle man.

Please do let us know how you get on.

[AndyJ]

For all those unfortunate people who have had dealings with the Visual Rights Group aka Permission Machine, here's a cheery tale about them and their business model getting roundly condemned by a court in Belgium: https://finniancolumba.be/en/copyright- ... nes-claim/

[hollidb95]

Hi all,
I received a reply from "Michaela" at Alamy:

==========================
​On Thu, 18 May 2023 at 14:24, <fairlicensing@alamy.com> wrote:
Hi Barry,

Thank you for your email.

Thank you for removing the image from your site. However, removal alone does not resolve this case. It is the website owner's responsibility to ensure all content uploaded to their site is licensed.

An infringement fee is higher than the cost of a standard license as extra costs are involved, including compensation to the contributor.

It is important that you understand our photographers make their living from the licensing of their images, and without these payments, they would not be able to continue to take the great images that we all need.

We have a duty of care to our photographers to ensure we find uses without licenses and secure a fair payment for them, which covers compensation to them.

This is why we ask for the settlement to be paid.

I would recommend that you consult a Copyright lawyer. We have a duty of care to ensure all uses of the imagery we represent have a valid license for use, and you have not proved that you have one, the onus here is absolutely upon you to do this.

We have given you the opportunity to remedy this via a settlement offer.

We can only consider a fee reduction if the counterparty is experiencing financial difficulty. We also need proof of this (e.g. bank statements).

Many thanks,

Michaela
==========================

I have just sent the following back to "Michaela":

==========================
Dear Michaela,

Many thanks for your reply.

I requested a full breakdown of the costs and rationale around the fee which I note has not been provided.

As I'm sure you will be aware should this matter proceed to small claims the matter would be judged based on the lost revenue of the license fee of £31.99, based on the principle of placing the you into a position as tho any infringement hadn't taken place, plus a reasonable administration amount. You state in your limited breakdown your administration fee is £40. No damages for flagrancy or moral infringement could be claimed as I have engaged with you, removed the image as soon as I was made aware of the issue and made a reasonable offer to resolve the matter.

I maintain that your speculative claim of £440 is unreasonably extortionate.

I therefore offer £31.99 for the license fee plus £40 as your stated admin fee, making a total of £71.99 ​in full and final settlement of the matter. ​This represents a 125% increase in the potential loss of earnings, which I'm sure you'll agree is reasonable; especially given I have removed the image and it's use was innocent and not a flagrant or malicious copyright infringement.

Many thanks,
Barry
==========================

I hope you'll agree with what I've done and I'll keep you posted. Any comments greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Barry

[AndyJ]

Hi Barry,

I certainly do agree with your response and counter-offer. Let's hope that Alamy do too.

Good work

Andy

[Habbers]

Thanks Habbers

Hi Andy -final update on this: almost a year on and I haven't heard a peep from them. Thanks for your help, what a fantastic service you give, it was so helpful and reassuring at a stressful time. I know this is a free resource, but if you let me know your favourite charity I'll happily make a donation.

All the best

Habbers

[AndyJ]

Hi Habbers,

Thanks for the update. Good to hear about your result,

Andy

[mattf1]

Hi, I'm jumping on this thread as another victim of the Visual Rights Group extortion. If I'm meant to start a new thread let me know and I'll do so.

So I got the email (and letter in the post) recently from Visual Rights Group, on behalf of Alamy, because of a picture used in a news article on my website. I honestly can't believe I used it, and it was so long ago it may have been written by a freelancer that I occasionally use. I just can't remember, but anyway following the email I unpublished the post.

The request was for £439.95, reduced by 10% if paid within 10 days.

* I responded initially asking for them to prove the image was definitely an Alamy image. It was, and I can see that the image can be licensed for editorial use for £31.99 + VAT
* In my followup email I reiterated that I did not make any financial gain from the image and would like to settle for a sensible amount that would pay the photographer their licence fee, and VRG a sensible admin fee. I offered £50.
* They responded by saying their client couldn't accept this amount, and gave a list of reasons why (moral damages, their costs, damages etc).
* I responded by saying I felt that their demand was disproportionate and asked them to clarify how they come up with their fee for 'moral damages', and stated that I was aware any court case would likely only award the photographer their licence fee and the costs of the court application.
* Their response gave me a breakdown of how they come to their figure, and again offered me another chance to pay now and get 20% off.

And that is where we stand. I don't know how to proceed.
I don't want to get into haggling and offering more, and I don't want to bluff when I'm not really a legal expert.

My genuine desire is that the photographer is paid their fee. I'm not intentionally trying to steal. But £351.96 (their latest offer) seems crazy.

Any advice?

Thanks
Matt

[AndyJ]

Hi Matt,

You have done exactly what we usually advise so perhaps you have already read through the other posts in this and the similar threads involving companies like PIxsy who employ the same tactics. They can add all sorts Mickey Mouse extra grounds to the demand but it doesn't make them valid. All you need to know is that if they carry out the threat to take you to court, the court will award damages based on the market value of a licence. While the infringement of copyright is a matter of strict liability for which there is rarely a defence, the claiment (and not VRG) would need to prove the claim for moral damages. I suspect their point will be that you didn't provide a credit for the photographer. However the right to a credit needs to be asserted (see sections 77 and 78 CPDA). One standard way this can be done is for the photographer or agency to embed a visible copyright notice in the image. But if there was no notice on the image there is no way you could have known whether or not the right had been asserted. Effectively the claimant would need to convince the court that you had such prior knowledge and failed to act on it. So unless there was a copyright notice on the image when you got it and you then removed it, they face some difficulty in proving that aspect.

Their claim for their administrative costs is totally inadmissible. You are not responsible of these. Furthermore, you are showing good faith in making a reasonable counter offer, and if they chose to call in the lawyers and the extra expense that that entails, that is entirely a (bad) business decision by them and the court will probably see it as unreasonable behaviour, taking into account that the amount of actual damages the court would award is the same as the figure your have counter-offered.

The challenge you face is convincing the paid monkeys at VRG that you know where you stand legally and based on a reasonable economic assessment of the situation they should accept your offer and stop wasting their resources and your time spinning this out just because that is what their flow chart says they ought to do.

[mattf1]

Thanks for the reassuring comments Andy. Really appreciate it.

Yes I got a lot of guidance by reading through this thread. I guess now I just don't know whether to keep going back to them and arguing my case, or stay quiet and let them follow it up with more threats.

Matt

[Mike]

Hi everyone,
Thanks so much for this thread, it's really interesting. Alas, I too have fallen foul of Alamy's infringement team recently, and received a very similar email to Barry (above), for photograph of the sign outside the UK's court of protection, that I used in an educational blog providing comment on updates about legal matters around the protection of vulnerable people.

Like Barry, I assumed the image would be 'fair use' considering a) it's a public building, b) the picture is in no way 'professional'. It's literally, a photo of a sign c) there are literally hundreds of pictures of this same sign taken from very slightly different angles out there, such that it's almost impossible to tell which one might be Alamy's, and which one isn't.

As I don't want to cause any issue with anyone, I took down the picture as soon as I received the email. However, I am loathe to engage 'Michaela' in a conversation as I'm not sure she's a real person the emails appear auto-generated. A simple linkedin search doesn't bring up any such person working for Alamy in Oxfordshire.

My sister (and company co-director) is keen to pay the hundreds of pounds just to stop the emails, however, I am adamant we've not really done anything wrong, and certainly shouldn't be due to pay hundreds of pounds for a simple and honest mistake. As other observers have noted above, it's essentially online bullying designed to scare those not aware of their rights and not prepared to defend themselves in court.

I will update you all if ever I do receive a message from solicitors.

[hollidb95]

Hi Mike,
Just to update that since my last email back to Michaela, I've received no reply. So I suspect they've realised I'm not falling for it and are quiet quitting the case.

I'll post if they do ever come back to me.

However I'm very happy to defend myself in court and follow through. Where a court I suspect will say I owe them a license fee and nothing more (and they know it).

Thanks,
Barry

[Proto]

It was interesting to read this thread.
But jumping back a few steps - is it always best to respond to the original email from these copyright trolls?
I have read advice elsewhere and other threads not to respond.
Does responding to the orginal email carry any value and could one contact the copyright owner directly to remedy any infringement by proposing to urchase the image?
Thanks

[AndyJ]

Hi Proto and welcome to the forum,

Assuming that when you receive a claim from a company like Permission Machine / Visual Rights Group you can't produce a valid licence for the image concerned, then you start from a position that you are probably liable for infringement. The fact that the amount being demanded to settle the claim is disporportionate doesn't mean that the underlying claim itself is invalid, so it is better to communicate with the company. This is because if they escalate matters into a court case and you continue to ignore all correspondence they will get a default judgment for the full amount against you and that could, ultimately, result in a visit by bailliffs to recover the debt. And even if you begin to respond after receiving the formal claim form from the court, it may count against you at trial that you failed to engage in negotiations at an earlier stage, before litigation. If the court found this was unreasonable behaviour, that could mean additional damages might be awarded against you.

If you are certain that they only have an email address for you and there is no way to connect you to the website where the alleged infringement took place then there is a chance that doing nothing might throw them off the trail. However in my experience most of these claims relate to either a personal blog or small business website and there is sufficient evidence of the identity of the owner or operator of the site (such as the domain registration), and so the idea that PM / VRG can't serve the court papers or send the bailiffs to your address no longer holds. As a strategy, doing nothing ranks alongside putting the final demand letter from the gas company at the back of a drawer.

And on your final point, yes in theory you could approach the actual copyright owner and try to negotiate a lower fee, but the reason that photographers or their agents (a picture agency like Alamy) will have engaged PM / VRG in the first place is so they don't have to deal with all the hassle of chasing infringers, so it is unlikely that the copyright owner will be inclined to want deal directly with you. Just read some of the earlier postings* here by member Fatty to see how strongly photographers and other creators feel about infringers. Let's just say, they are not viewed benevolently for understandable reasons.

*For example here: viewtopic.php?p=9700#p9700
and here: viewtopic.php?p=7350#p7350