Picrights Scam Targeting My Small Business

[tsizemore]

I have received 2 emails from Pic rights claiming I stole a photo that was used on my website for less than 1 year. They are asking for $650. I took the photo down right away and have been ignoring them. I feel okay about this because I am in the US and they are in Canada. Am I missing anything that could come back and bite me? I rather not pay $650 to them, but I don’t want big problems either.

[J Storm]

Understanding what Pic Rights is will help you. They are not the copyright holder and they are not a law firm. So, they cannot sue you in any capacity. That does not necessarily mean you should ignore them. They represent some very well established companies. They are some some sort of license compliance company. If they do not settle cases, they typically shop them to attorneys. I am not sure if every case that does not settle accepts accepted, but there is lots of indication that a large number of their cases get handled by attorneys in the US.

If you think you did infringe, you might want to consider paying the amount or making them an offer to accept a lesser amount. If you have economical access to an attorney, you can also start there.

[Editor]

Pic Rights may be a lot of things, but they are not a scam. They have legitimate clients with, in most cases, very legitimate cases. That does not mean you should treat what they say as Gospel– in fact, you should not as they are not attorneys, but you are doing yourself a disservice if think PicRights is a scam and choose to ignore their claims for that reason.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Editor.

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