Copyright Trolls Now Going After Random Bloggers Who Reposted Photos

from the this-won't-end-well dept

Apparently, the Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG), one of the earliest copyright trolling operations in the US, is really building up its copyright trolling photo business. Last year, we wrote about how CEG had gone after a Lindsay Lohan fan site because the young fan had posted some (you guessed it) photos of Lohan. And now it appears that it's ramping up the practice, as a number of sites have apparently received demands from CEG for $500 because they posted a random photo which they likely found via Google's image search. Yes, reposting photos in such a manner can be copyright infringement (though, quite frequently, there may be a very strong fair use defense -- but that's very context specific), but it really does seem quite scammy to go after clearly naive internet users, who are just trying to post a photo of a red pepper to go with a blog post about vegetables.

As noted by the Cashman Law Firm, this whole practice seems really icky. Yes, technically, the law may have been broken, but does anyone actually think that these users would have otherwise purchased the image? And is hitting the ordinary internet user who just wants to illustrate their blog post about red peppers with a federal lawsuit threat really seem proportionate?

On a personal note, hitting website users with a threat of a lawsuit over an image pulled from a Google image search is simply obscene. I would certainly understand such a letter if the image had a watermark pointing the user to a website where they can purchase rights to the photo without the watermark, or if there was a copyright mark on the image. Yet these photos have none of these, and they are literally trolling old websites and blogs looking for photos which were copied from other websites.

What makes this so obscene is that the photo copyright owners are asserting the same copyright infringement claims as do the copyright holders for the bittorrent cases we deal with daily. Along with the same copyright claims come the same shock of having the law provide statutory damages of $150,000 to the copyright holder who can prove the infringement. $150,000 for a movie download in my mind is an obscene and disproportionate punishment for the “crime” of downloading a copyrighted title. Even moreso for a photo. AND, even moreso for an unmarked and unwatermarked photo freely available on a Google image search.

And, in fact, it appears to be even worse, since that same blog post later indicates that at least some of the people being threatened had the images show up via third party RSS aggregators -- meaning they didn't post or host the image themselves. But, that's the kind of situation you get when copyright laws are completely screwy.

Filed Under: copyright trolls, photos
Companies: copyright enforcement group

Copyright Troll Demands $8,500 From Rarely Visited Lindsay Lohan Fansite

from the that'll-win-fans dept

We've covered plenty of copyright trolling operations, and the Copyright Enforcement Group is one of the earliest to show up in the US, though there are few details as to who is actually behind it. We recently have been in contact with someone on the receiving end of a shakedown threat letter from CEG for their Lindsay Lohan fan page. The person who ran the site was, not surprisingly, a Lindsay Lohan fan, and tried to use the site to "promote the good things in Lindsay's life" rather than the typical schadenfreude surrounding Lohan these days. It was, in other words, the kind of site that Lindsay Lohan herself might appreciate. But it no longer exists, thanks to copyright trolling.

Like most fan sites, this one had some graphics, and the company that holds the copyright on those graphics, AKM Images, apparently hired CEG to start demanding cash from people, including the operator of this Lindsay Lohan fansite. Upon receiving the email, the owner of the site completely deleted it out of fear. However, he also saw that, according to Google analytics, the page that had the images had a grand total of nine pageviews from six unique visitors (and the operator of the site notes that one or two of the visits likely came from his own computer). In other words, even if the images were "infringing," you could make a pretty strong argument for either fair use or de minimis use.

The threat letter, of course, makes no mention of the details or possible defenses. It just says that each image requires a "settlement" fee of $500, and if you total up the 17 images (sent across two separate demand letters) that were hosted on the site, the owner is expected to pay $8,500.

It does seem likely that this individual did, in fact, post images without a license, though this is quite common across the internet. You could see a pretty strong fair use/de minimis use claim here, in that the site was non-commercial, was designed to help promote Lohan and was basically just a fan expressing appreciation. But, these days, expressing appreciation of someone famous can get you threat letters like this one (we've included one of the two threat letters below).

While there is, perhaps, an argument that the site infringed, the "harm" on the copyright holder is non-existent (there is no way this person would have paid to license such images). If I were a part of Lindsay Lohan's "publicity" team, at the very least I would probably look into paying off this settlement and supporting the site operator. In the meantime, it seems like actions like this could do a lot of harm to celebrities, as copyright trolls try to "crackdown" on fan sites, not only forcing many of those sites closed, but pissing off some of the celebs' biggest fans.

Filed Under: copyright troll, licensing, lindsay lohan, shakedown
Companies: akm images, copyright enforcement group

Anti-Piracy Lawyer John Steele Caught Copying Content From Other Anti-Piracy Lawyer

from the now-that-would-be-a-fun-lawsuit dept

A year and a half ago, in writing about all the new law offices jumping into the mass "anti-piracy" shakedown lawsuit business, one of the early ones we covered was an operation called the Copyright Enforcement Group -- or CEG. Oddly, we haven't seen many stories of CEG in action threatening people... but we do keep coming across stories of other such lawyers copying content from CEG. Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about how US Copyright Group had copied large parts of CEG's website into its own website and, now, TorrentFreak has pointed out that infamous, mass-suing lawyer John Steele has been caught copying parts of CEG's website as well. This is doubly ironic, given Steele's usual bravado and talk about the evils of copyright infringement. From Steele's website

From CEG's website
TorrentFreak asked CEG about this and it claimed that this was not authorized and that it might have to "take steps" to prevent Steele from continuing this copying. Now wouldn't that be an interesting lawsuit to follow?

Filed Under: copying, copyright, john steele
Companies: copyright enforcement group

Why Do The Various Copyright Pre-Settlement Lawsuit Factories Keep Copying Each Other?

from the that-design-looks-familiar dept

Earlier this year we noted, with some amusement, that the US Copyright Group (the biggest name among the recent glut of copyright pre-settlement shakedown letter factories popping up all over the country) had apparently copied the code for its settlement website from a competitor, the Copyright Enforcement Agency (even leaving in the phone number). And, of course, we've also noted that the US Copyright Group is now involved in a lawsuit after threatening to sue competitor Media Copyright Group, for being too similar.

Now, a reader who goes by the name Mr. Piracy Reporter, notes that yet another new pre-settlement lawsuit factory, going by the name of the Copyright Defense Agency, appears to have created a very, very similar website to that of the Copyright Enforcement Agency (the same company that USCG was accused of copying. You can see the images below:

Now, it's true that they're not exactly the same, but it certainly looks like one site pointed their designer towards the other's and said "make it look like that." Either that or the design firm they hired just went looking for a similar site to mimic. I especially like how both have similar, but not identical, graphics on the right-hand side, including the globe with the arrow (what does that even mean?). Of course, such copying almost certainly is not illegal, but for organizations trying to convince the world that they're all about preventing unauthorized copying, it does seem amusing to note just how much copying of each other they seem to do.

Filed Under: copying, copyright, pre-settlement
Companies: copyright defense agency, copyright enforcement group

US Copyright Group Caught Red Handed Copying Competitor's Website

from the photo-hunt dept

Why is it that the biggest "defenders" of copyright are always the ones caught infringing on others' copyrights? As a whole bunch of you have been submitting, US Copyright Group -- the publicity seeking effort from DC law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver that is suing tens of thousands of people for alleged copyright infringement in an effort to get them to pay up via "pre-settlement" letters -- appears to have a bit of a problem with understanding copyright itself. TorrentFreak is showing how USCG appears to have blatantly copied the full HTML for its "settlements" website from a competing operation called Copyright Enforcement Group. USCG had set up a site at CopyrightSettlement.info that had code that was so obviously copied from CEG that it included CEG's copyright statement, images and phone number for some of the time. Since then, much of the code has been "scrubbed," but plenty of CEG's code was still there. Here's the image TorrentFreak put together noting the... uh... obvious similarities (you can click for a larger view): And it's not a case of the two operations being related or sharing information. TorrentFreak contacted CEG about this, and was told:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are not associated with the US Copyright Group and they are not authorized to use Copyright Enforcement Group materials."

Someone else was told that Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver will be receiving a cease & desist shortly. I wonder what sort of "pre-settlement" option will come with that letter.

Filed Under: copying, images, websites
Companies: copyright enforcement group, dunlap grubb & weaver, us copyright group