I may be in the wrong but all I owe you is apology and removal of your picture. Unless I actually caused you provable monetary harm or gained monetary reward by utilizing your copyrighted work. At least that's how I think it SHOULD be. I know there are ridiculously large statutory damages for copyright infringement without any provable material gain or harm. I don't think it's fair.
@ChristianZ
Please take my advice from someone on the other side of the issue who does this regularly and makes a six figure annual return from copyright recovery. I'm not saying this to show off, but just so that people are very clear on where the boundaries are.
I may be in the wrong but all I owe you is apology and removal of your picture. Unless I actually caused you provable monetary harm or gained monetary reward by utilizing your copyrighted work. This is 100% incorrect. When you are caught having infringed on someone else's work...whether it be an image or music or whatever else, you have violated federal copyright law in the US. What you think you owe people doesn't matter in the eyes of the law, but many people think exactly like you do and get a real shock when someone aggressively pursues their claim.
The copyright holder doesn't have to prove that you harmed them in the slightest, it's not a trademark. What they will have to do is to provide some kind of proof of what the infringed work has actual monetary value. That is not required by the law, but it both shows the infringer that you aren't lying when you say "People pay me X amount for this work, and you stole it and used it for free". If you cannot reach any settlement and the case gets filed in the Federal court then that valuation info gets sent to the judge as well. If you still refuse to settle for a reasonable amount it can go to trial or more likely summary judgment...the judge decides who wins and the damages. If the work is registered the attorney can ask for statutory damages and also for legal fees to be added. That is up to $150,000 per infringement, plus the attorney's legal fees.
You can of course still refuse to pay, thinking that you don't owe these people a thing. I have had plenty of those, who violate the court order. What happens then is that my attorney can search for your accounts, sent the court order to the bank and the bank will take the money out in full. I just got handed $72,000 from an infringer who thought like you. It took a couple of years to track down their account. When my attorney did, the bank sent all the money within 48 hours. That same infringer ended up paying out 3.5X what the original demand was from my attorney. If they had negotiated it would have been even less. They didn't, they fought every step of the way so the judge hammered them.
I know there are ridiculously large statutory damages for copyright infringement without any provable material gain or harm. I don't think it's fair No there aren't. The damages have a set upper limit ($150k per infringement). It's pretty rare to get anywhere close to that upper limit unless the behavior of the infringer was willful and egregious AND the copyright holder can prove that the work would fetch that amount if it were sold (and not stolen). The person holding the copyright will have to show convincing proof that their work has worth and merit in order to win large sums. No court will hand over larger sums to someone who isn't already making money from their work.
If you have ignored the notices you get and they haven't escalated it, that is because they are not perceiving your business as being viable enough to pursue. Many of these automated services are useless, they won't go the distance and that's why I use them to find infringements and then use my own attorneys that I personally hired and control. The first thing we do is assess whether it looks like the infringement is worth pursuing. Things like simple social media uses (not commercial), educational uses, small time business that look like mom and pop shops, etc. we generally will not pursue as there is no return. Most of the time it is businesses that get sued, and I personally am much more willing to accept a lower settlement from small businesses and mom and pop type businesses that show a willingness to settle.
One important point. Nobody can sue you for copyright infringement for work they don't actually have the rights to, or they didn't create themselves, or which they didn't register. If a person is making it up and is falsely pursing a claim that they don't even have the right to pursue then you can turn around and sue them right back for wasting your time and also include your legal fees. It cuts both ways. The courts have gotten sick of so many copyright suits that they have punished the attorneys and the plaintiffs quite heavily if they lie or misstate that the work is registered when it wasn't. In fact the most active copyright attorney in the country was disbarred completely and his client was hammered with huge damages for lying about their claims. You cannot simply get greedy and make sh!t up because these companies will come right back and hammer you back.
To correct a previous misstatement in another post... With copyright law you cannot imprison someone, it's civil law not criminal. If the infringer is destitute you cannot get blood from a stone...it's the end of the line for the case and it just gets dropped. In other countries...the UAE for one, it is a criminal matter and the court can have the infringer arrested...a scary prospect indeed.
Most countries do not have statutory damages as high as the USA. But many countries are still fairly high...I have done well with cases in Canada, Australia, Germany and the UK. Do I care if they don't pay as much as the USA? It's all revenue in the end.
