Nealreal - 11:36 pm on Dec 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

Years ago, I did a website for a client, I used some images from Getty Images's website (this was early in my web design career, when I just got images from anywhere. I should've known they were copyrighted and couldn't be used without a license, not even for the web.

I thought perhaps, the web images were OK, because I wasn't using using them for print. Today, Getty calls my client and says they want $7000 bucks for copyright infringement. Dang! I immediately replaced the images with photos from our paid stock gallery (iStock) We've been using them for years now. I spoke with the guy who called my client, even though I replaced them, they still want the money.

Has anybody been in this situation before? What can I do?
I won't let my client take the fall for this (I take the blame), but I do not want to pay a whopping 7k for some images that were barely seen.

Note: the images were displayed as part of a collage in the header of the site. The entire image was about 550px width by 55px height. There where about 8 images side-to-side inside the collage. The images were also altered in color to match the site.

Is there anyway around this. What can I do about this dumb mistake I made years ago? What can I tell Getty?
Any help is appreciated.