magicalclick
New Member
Hello,
I friend got sued by Getty Images over his gardening website. I help setup the site on the hosting service he paid. The site provided several templates and we choose the one for landscaping. And now, we are getting sued over an imaged used in the template. We took out the image right away, and they still demand 1800 dollar in return. 1800 dollars is a very big amount for my friend. I just feel like we are being bullied. The site barely has any visitors, I don't even know how they managed to find our site. And we don't know the template is having illegal images. Not only that, there is no way for normal human to know a corner of a random tree is copyrighted. On the template, it is a 170x170 tree with no leaf. The branch turns to green to match the template green color scheme. The actual image is a color photo of a tree in a desert looking area. We thought the template provider took the image themselves. I mean, it is just a tree (no lower trunk and no desert background). It looks just like a normal tree in the winter time. It is very hard to recognize that is a copyright material.
Now my friend feels like he should be bullied because Getty Images is a big company. They are smarter, more money, more time, more people, more everything. How can he, the little guy, defend from the big guys? But, it just feels wrong to be bullied like this. Can we do anything to defend ourselves?
The web hosting company took out the image right away and my friend told Getty Images that he didn't know and it is from a template from the hosting site. And Getty Images insist that he is responsible and demand 1800 USD.
What should he do?
Thank you.
I friend got sued by Getty Images over his gardening website. I help setup the site on the hosting service he paid. The site provided several templates and we choose the one for landscaping. And now, we are getting sued over an imaged used in the template. We took out the image right away, and they still demand 1800 dollar in return. 1800 dollars is a very big amount for my friend. I just feel like we are being bullied. The site barely has any visitors, I don't even know how they managed to find our site. And we don't know the template is having illegal images. Not only that, there is no way for normal human to know a corner of a random tree is copyrighted. On the template, it is a 170x170 tree with no leaf. The branch turns to green to match the template green color scheme. The actual image is a color photo of a tree in a desert looking area. We thought the template provider took the image themselves. I mean, it is just a tree (no lower trunk and no desert background). It looks just like a normal tree in the winter time. It is very hard to recognize that is a copyright material.
Now my friend feels like he should be bullied because Getty Images is a big company. They are smarter, more money, more time, more people, more everything. How can he, the little guy, defend from the big guys? But, it just feels wrong to be bullied like this. Can we do anything to defend ourselves?
The web hosting company took out the image right away and my friend told Getty Images that he didn't know and it is from a template from the hosting site. And Getty Images insist that he is responsible and demand 1800 USD.
What should he do?
Thank you.