And for those not believing I was actually sued and made payment to own up to MY obligations of using someone elses work, here you go. You can even go to the gettyimages website and use the case number (as shown below) to do your own verification through the actual source. I am NOT mad at getty images or blame them for this incident and I am not asking for your money! They are protecting their business and livelihood as they should; the problem lies in unethical people selling their soul to save $25; at least that is how I see the root cause analysis! I was in the wrong for trusting too many and having too lax of a verification process. Getty was not interested in who provided me the photos, as it was I that “used it” and therefore I am responsible. Let this be a lesson to us all, just because we get images in an e-mail or find them through the internet, use of these images may be violating someone’s copyright. Getty uses a “curve” to establish their settlements, so if I had been working for a Fortune 100 company and this photo was used across the company in safety training, the price of settlement would have been substaintially HIGHER.
Lastly, the $875 that this cost me is WAY LESS than it will cost me to file suit against this lying piece of excrement! In other words it would cost me more in filing fees and legal fees than I would be able to recover; trust me I want this guy to pay, but because my damges were only $875 and the value of the website is so low, I would end up spending more of my money to teach this piece of excrement a lesson on top of the $875 I have already spent. I am using this as a learning lesson, making changes to ensure it does not happen to me again, and moving on.
