LEGAL NOTICE TO PICSCOUT , GETTY IMAGES, PICSCOUT CLIENTS: You are prohibited from accessing this site
Legal Notice to PicScout, trading as http://www.picscout.com/ ,Getty Images, trading as http://www.gettyimages.com/ , and all other customers of PicScout:You are prohibited from accessing DC Direct Action News
Update for readers: Getty Images has acquired Picscout for $20 million
1: Permission for the copyright scanning robot program known as Picscout to access this site is explicity denied. All other robots which scan content for the purpose of any form of law enforcement, , criminal or civll, are also denied permission to access this site at any time.
2: Most of the photos here were taken by our own cameras. They are licensed for all noncommercial reproduction EXCEPT by law enforcement,by Getty Images, or by any other corporation that has at least once filed a copyright infringment lawsuit against one or more online users of their content. Use of any original DC Direct Action News story, photo, audio, or video recording for any propose by any entity which is a plainitiff in a copyright infringement case is hereby prohibited.
3: Getty Images is explicitly prohibited from using any image that originated in a DC Direct Action News camera for any propose. It is up to Getty to guess which ones these are! These photos are released for not-for-profit use by the general public,their use for extortion by an external party claiming copyright against a third party downloader from THEIR site shall be treated as a copyright violation.
4: Notice concerning demands for damages originating from Getty Images or other
scanning robot users
We regard Getty Images as an organized crime entity engaged in extortion. As such, all payment SHALL BE REFUSED if any threats of legal action are ever received from Getty Images or any other copyright holder engaging in extortion by demanding “damages” prior to sending DCMA takedown notifications. Not only will we refuse to pay the funds you demand, we shall instead seek liquidated damages in the amount of $10,000 US per violation or our Terms of Service concerning image scanning robots.
January 28, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Sounds harsh but they’ve made it so that most sites are blocking the entire bezeqint.net IP ranges because of DoS issues. The legal harassment over previously given away images is just the icing on the cake for blocking those ranges. If you’re in Israel, you will need a different ISP or get them to stop helping hide the bot runners by constantly giving them new Class C blocks when they get blocked.
July 3, 2012 at 1:00 am
There’s plenty of good reasons to block the PicScout spybot. Gross bandwidth usage and rude disregard for robots.txt come to mind. Their only goal is to find anything that even remotely resembles a copyright infringement so that their clients can send extortionate letters making ridiculous claims for settlement. Google “extortion letter info” to learn more about PicScout and their client base. Everyone who publishes content on the web needs to be aware of this gross practice of copyright trolling lest they fall into the trap.
July 18, 2012 at 2:10 am
May I have permission to use this Legal Notice on a new copyright troll project I’m getting set to launch???
Greetings Moe, funny seeing you here!
July 18, 2012 at 3:22 am
Yes-feel free to use it or any edited version of similar intent!
July 20, 2012 at 3:17 am
Hey Buddhapi! I actually posted about this legal strategy on the ELI forum. You may have been on vacation. Let me know how I can help with your project. Thanks for the insights, dcdirectactionnews!
September 20, 2012 at 6:44 am
Can we also have pomission to use the legal notis on our page
we are beeing crawlt repeatly, and have a battel with a ambulance chaser in cohud with picscout in Sweden.
Best regards
September 23, 2012 at 1:38 am
Hell yeah: You have permission to use it and modify it as you see fit. I’d love to see one of these fuckers get hammered for liquidated damages they agreed to by law when their bot hit your site. Set the damages in your version of the notice as high as you think you can get a court to enforce. Then you could even offer to settle for a few grand to pay for the bandwidth and the hassle, using an “inverse Getty letter” of your own to hit them with their own hammer. As for that ambulance chaser, they should know better than to access your computers in violation of posted TOS, which wou;d be like an attorney for the RIAA getting caught offering an independant, unsigned band’s album as a torrent without permission,