DANGER: Picrights copyright claims asking money

[philipe3dKD]

Hello, this is my first participation here at BHF and I would like to talk to you about something that has been bothering me a lot.
I am a blogger with nearly twenty years of experience. My blog already has more than 6000 articles.
I recently received a threatening email from the company picrights, demanding payment for "copyright infringement". I actually did an educational article citing the source of a news site as well as the photographer. I believed that giving credit to the author would qualify as "fair use", but apparently, this company has been attracting photographers and large agencies, such as AFP, Reuters, The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, StockFood America and others. , threatening old process websites, asking for exorbitant amounts such as "out of court settlement". When the editor refuses or even doesn't respond, picrights hires a law firm and effectively sues people. They have been practicing what is called "speculaive invoincing".

Bytheway, Picrights is not a scam or fraud scheme.
PicRights is a real company based in Canada. They have very big clients. They work with real law firms. They are members of respected organizations such as the US based Digital Media Licensing Association (http://www.digitalmedialicensing.org/mem...tory.shtml) and the EU based CEPIC (http://cepic.org/member/directory). By all objective standards, PicRights is a legitimate company.

Until PicRights Ltd arrived, disputes could usually be resolved easily between the photographer and journalist without having to go to court, and you would never be faced with a huge fee. Normally, the image producer would only ask for a credit and no money would be exchanged.

The problem is greater for large and old sites, which may have used free stock images, believing they were creative commons images, but were wrongly registered, thus exposing publishers to a great risk.
Picrights has been using a spiderbot system to fetch the images and generate the processes. Their copyright enforcement efforts seem to be purely by email and to be very scripted. They send unsuspecting users of photo notices via email along with instructions on how to pay online with a credit card. The email also contains screenshots showing their client’s original image with the purported infringing use. PicRights will also advise that merely removing the image from your website and server will not be sufficient to absolve yourself of any copyright infringement liability. It will also demand payment and, if this request is completely ignored, then PicRights will commonly retain a law firm such as Higbee and Associates to make further demands and potentially even initiate a lawsuit against you.
They refer claims to law firms like Higbee and Associates to sue their victims.

Not Only Picrights, now it seems, this money-making scheme "brokering deals" that they create themselves has become a good - and millionaire - business. Other such companies are: ImageRights, CopyTrack, CopyPants, and Pixsy.
NObody will be safe with these shit. PicRights is a hodgepodge of small companies registered in other countries. Everything seems to be centered around PicRights Europe GmbH and the Höfinger family. PicRights Europe is indeed controlled by SIXMÜHLE Verwaltungs, which belongs to the Höfinger couple. The Austrian structure is owned by Mediapro Mediamarketing, which belongs to the Höfinger couple and their children.

The value of the amicable settlement can be negotiated and interested parties often prefer to pay the agreed amount rather than opting for a lawsuit. And for good reason: most of the people involved, unaware of the ins and outs of copyright, really think they're infringing. In other words, it is a money-generating machine!

PicRights' lucrative activities are unpleasant, but it's still respectful of artists and photographers to avoid using copyrighted images, especially since there are alternatives.

In addition to using free stock photos, here are my tips for hiding your ass:

1- Take care of your domain: Some countries facilitate access to the domain owner's data, in a simple whois query. Buy your domain safely.

2- Be careful where you host your files. They will look for ways to locate you to try to extort you. The best thing is not to be within reach, and that involves avoiding giving out personal data, and even being careful when buying your domain. I'm not going to recommend that you buy the domain using fake data generators, but you know, it exists.

3- Install your site on a Thor server - High costs, but depending on the content, the risk is worth the investment.

4- Block spiderbot access from them. Picrights uses a proprietary spiderbot to fetch the images. I still haven't figured out what it is and maybe it would be possible to block it or direct it to a honeypot. A little investigation is needed here yet.

5- A friend suggested an ingenious idea to me: Adapt the code of a website's messaging system so that you can return an email as an invalid mailbox, when it is an automatic email from the picrights bot. He will likely interpret this as a "miss shot" and move on to the next target in line. It takes some php study to adapt a wordpress plugin for this type of strategy.

If you have any more good ideas to avoid the bastards, feel free to share to help the community.
regards

[TheCowboy]

(08-28-2022 02:28 AM)philipe3dKD Wrote:  Their copyright enforcement efforts seem to be purely by email and to be very scripted. They send unsuspecting users of photo notices via email along with instructions on how to pay online with a credit card.

Oh boy! Well, good luck to them. They sound very professional indeed

[discomix]

Interesting share mate! I know today some peoples have resorted to this tactics to milk money out of anyone who is not aware of copyrights! Same goes with patents scam as well..!

[darkweb]

Max reps Phili for this post. Very good to know for sure! Will have to save this for further study. These pirates will look for any reason to take your money. Also going after web accessibility cases as well. Millions of websites are not disabled-friendly and the sharks smell blood in the water! That and the fact the sites need to be updated, has driven the skyrocketing sale of 'web accessibility' tools and plugins.
Thanks again for the post.

[darkweb]

I must have closed a page before posting. Max reps for this great post Philipe!