Copyright infringement via Permission Machine, acting on behalf of Alamy

[frederik20]

Hello everyone,

I am also one of the lucky ones that gets bullied by this company.
It's about an image on a website I have not used in years and has basically been sitting idle.
I have read through this whole thread, but still have two questions that do not seem to be discussed.

1) Would it be an idea to try and directly contact the photographer. Do I understand correctly that he or she is in the end the determining party, and if he or she settles with you it does not matter what Alamy or Permission machine tells you?

2) Initially I was inclined to simply ignore their email. It also actually ended up in my SPAM, so that seems rather appropriate.
I get really frustrated by companies like this, that force mostly innocent (small) companies to take action, causing them a lot of stress and discomfort while they continue their disgusting practices. I am all in favour of rewarding creatives, but this is not that.
I see most people recommend to reply and respond; and i wonder why. Is this to indicate that you take appropriate action and are willing to work with them by removing the image? It almost seems that you acknowledge their faul practice..

I appreciate this forum and all the great content being discussed here.

[AndyJ]

hi frederik, and welcome to the forum,

You can certainly try contacting the photographer but in many cases he or she will have employed Permission Machine in order that he/she doesn't have to deal with such matters. It may well be that the copyright owner's agreement with PM also prevents him/her from settling for a different fee once PM have found the alleged infringement and begun the process of trying to get recovery.

As for not responding at all, that is also possible and it may work - I have seen no evidence either way on whether this causes PM to abandon a claim. However, if the person being contacted realises that they may be liable for infringement and, like you, are in favour of rewarding creatives, then the issue needs to be addressed in one way or another. At the very least, the disputed image should be removed.

[Habbers]

Hi Andy

Thanks all very helpful. I replied and made an offer to include a £25 admin. fee. Inevitably this was rejected, their correspondence including the following blurb:
Please note that in the IPEC small claims track, our client can claim more that just the license fee if they chose to initiate proceedings in the UK, these include:
• fixed sums in relation to issuing the claim;
• court fees (including the hearing fee);
• expenses which a party or witness has reasonably incurred travelling to or from a hearing or
staying away from home for the purpose of attending the hearing;
• loss of earnings or loss of leave evidenced by a party or witness caused by attending a court
hearing, limited to £90 per day for each person (PD 27 para 7.3);
• in proceedings which include a claim for an injunction, a sum for legal advice and assistance
relating to that claim, not exceeding £260 (PD 27 para 7.2);
• such further costs as the court may decide at the conclusion of the hearing should be paid by a
party who has behaved unreasonably. A party’s rejection of an offer of settlement will not of
itself constitute unreasonable behaviour but the court may take it into consideration (CPR
27.14 (3)).

They followed up with a counter offer reducing the demand from £308.50 to £225. I rejected this and they have followed up with:

We are sorry to hear that you do not wish to proceed with our clients reduced settlement offer.

We will now prepare this case to be escalated to our solicitors to resolve.

Please note that the settlement will revert to the original amount and further administration fees will be added by our solicitors.

I'll reply basically saying "see you in court" and we'll see where this goes! I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for all help to date.

[AndyJ]

Hi Habbers,

Thanks for the update. Their response is all very predictable, unfortunately. Please keep us informed with how things go.

[Sparky33316]

Hi Habbers,

My experience was very much the same as yours.

Last I heard from them was back in Feb this year when they Permission Machine told me they were handing over to their solicitors. I have heard absolutely nothing since then.

Hopefully your experience from here onwards will be the same as mine..... silence !!

Best of luck and keep us posted.

[shaunyness]

Hi all,

I have not heard from PM since February 24th, when they offered me a slightly reduced fee. If that changes, I'll write again.

Shaun

I have received further comms this morning (August 18th) - "Unfortunately, as we have not heard from you with regards to this case since 21/02/2022, we will be proceeding with this matter. We will allow 7 days for you to contact us to resolve this case between us, however if we have still received no response, this case will be escalated to our solicitors."

I'm unsure of how to respond really. Part of me wants to let it play out with the solicitors and the other wants to put it to bed. I'll sleep on it.

[storm456]

ITS A COMPLETE CON JOB - DON"T FALL FOR IT

I was sent a letter in the post months ago. I emailed them to ask what it was about.

They hit me with lots of legal shpiel. I replied -

Dear Sam

Please send me a breakdown of your proposed figure.

I have taken legal advice and am clear on my rights. I will offer to pay £35.99 (The value of the license is purchased) + 10% admin fee for the image even though I have removed the image in question.

Otherwise I am happy to defend it.

----

They replied saying it had been sent to their lawyers. Haven't heard anything for 2 months now.

[Another victim]

Is it just me or is anyone else suspicious at the lack of follow ups from letter recipients in this thread? It would seem that the speculative invoicing practices of Permission Machine aka Visual RIghts Group have hit enough targets that there would be SOMEONE telling us about how the alleged infringement was resolved, wouldn't it? Am I being a cynic in imagining that these bullies end up negotiating a significantly smaller settlement but with a Non Disclosure Agreement to protect VRG's golden egg laying device?

[shaunyness]

Is it just me or is anyone else suspicious at the lack of follow ups from letter recipients in this thread? It would seem that the speculative invoicing practices of Permission Machine aka Visual RIghts Group have hit enough targets that there would be SOMEONE telling us about how the alleged infringement was resolved, wouldn't it? Am I being a cynic in imagining that these bullies end up negotiating a significantly smaller settlement but with a Non Disclosure Agreement to protect VRG's golden egg laying device?

I suspect many people have simply folded to the pressure and settled for an amount they're not happy admitting to on here. Fingers crossed someone follows up with a resolution soon.

[Another victim]

But why? Aside from the letter tennis being faintly irritating it's not exactly a biggie is it? 'Hannah' (who is as likely to really be named Hannah as I am to be named Shep) just cranks out her standard boilerplate replies hinting darkly about the consequences of not just rolling over and paying whatever extortion figure she asks for, but I've still yet to see a letter from her solicitors, let alone an actual case laid.

There's no money in them actually suing anyone as they're only going to receive a <£100 settlement nett of costs they've paid out, and - flagrant behaviour aside - they're not going to get any 'penalty' from the defendant. If they had genuinely fought a case and won, they'd be falling over themselves to trumpet about it - just imagine how it would increase the average yield from the fishing expeditions if they waved someone in front of you and told you what they had got from him! The fact that they don't mention any wins makes me think they haven't HAD any wins.

So why would anyone offer any more than the token figures in this thread of a license fee and £25 for stamps or whatever? The worst they can do is send you stroppy emails - they're not going to sue, and even if they did they could only 'win' a similar sum to what people are offering without the bother of court. I don't know, it just all seems like a ball and cup street corner confidence trick to me, where they have to keep you 'hot' in case you suddenly wake up and realise you've allowed the heat of the moment to obscure your risk/benefit reasoning. Of course, IANAL and it's a pretty good bet that 'Hannah' is monitoring this forum in between doorman shifts at the local nightclub

[JoolsM]

Hi all

I have stumbled on this forum searching for information on Visual Rights Group as I have been in correspondence with them since Wednesday when I received an email regarding an image I used three years ago on my book review blog which is in no way a commercial enterprise of any kind, purely a hobby.

Similarly to all the other stories here, I immediately removed the image & offered to pay the license fee but they are still demanding £320.00. My last email to them yesterday was asking for a breakdown of how they reached this figure when the price of the license for the image in question on Alamy’s website is £35.99.

I will update you all on my progress as I have no intention of paying anything like the figure they are asking.

[JoolsM]

I just received a reply to my email of Saturday which contained the same boilerplate response as everyone else to a request for a breakdown of their settlement calculation. Interestingly, they attached their ‘Legal Guidelines’ which they state is what their ‘lawyers use when determining settlement with our client.’ I don’t know if anyone else has seen this but it appears to be a breakdown of the rates they have used to calculate the cost of investigating breaches.

[Another victim]

As has been mentioned several times in this thread and others, their costs of doing business are their own affair and won't be awarded outside extraordinary circumstances. There is no realistic possibility of a court awarding those sums, and their insinuations that they will get these sums from you one way or another are at best disingenuous and at worst bordering on extortion. It'll be interesting to find out who their solicitors are - the Solicitors Regulation Authority take a dim view of speculative invoicing.

[KateG]

Hi Sparky33316
Have you heard anything since?
Is there a period of time after which they can no longer proceed with court claim?
I am in the same position got the email this am and freaking out! I am reading this thread and preparing my response.
Thank you for this thread!
K

Hi Habbers,

My experience was very much the same as yours.

Last I heard from them was back in Feb this year when they Permission Machine told me they were handing over to their solicitors. I have heard absolutely nothing since then.

Hopefully your experience from here onwards will be the same as mine..... silence !!

Best of luck and keep us posted.

[AndyJ]

Is there a period of time after which they can no longer proceed with court claim?

Hi Kate and welcome to the forum.

I know you addressed your question to Sparky, but I can answer this part of your question. It's six years from the date of the infringement. See Section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980. This is qualified by other parts of the Act so that the 'start' date of the six year period may be brought forward if the infringement was in some way concealed from the rights owner. An image on a normal website which was open to the public would not meet this criterion. However since infringement of this sort is usually a contiuous act over a period of time, the clock doesn't start running until the end of the act of infringement, ie when it is taken down from the website. In contrast to this, where an infringing image is published in a book or magazine, the act of infringement occurs on the day of publication and isn't said to continue after that date just because the book or magazine may still be on sale several days or months later.