I Just Got A Weird DMCA In The Mail

I run a forum for posting pics and videos of models and celebs and I just got a weird DMCA in the mail from Sanders Law for one Selena Gomez image on my forum it says I am being sued. I deleted the whole set with the image and banned the person posted the set. Anybody else got a DMCA from them? I did some searching on the internet looks like they are trying to scam people out of money with Copyright

 

Post it here. That sounds entirely fishy.

Nigel

 

Quick Google search of "Sanders Law scam" or even "Sanders Law PLLC" shows quite a lot of threads about this company involved in copyright trolling and it seems that this is the standard way they are performing this scam (threats about uncopyrighted photos). A lot of the threads now lead to a blank or removed page, so they seem to be doing their best to cover their tracks but there is just too big of a trail of evidence.

 

wow, yeah definitely post the letter here. This is something I am quite interested in. I do not like bullies and IP trolls. I am somewhat surprised that I had not heard of them yet. I will look into it and try to send it up to techdirt or popehat.com They are in the business of exposing that sort of thing.

My buddy and I cobbled together the new popehat signal a while back. http://www.popehat.com/2013/08/22/p...on-blogger-exposing-telemarketing-violations/

excuse the plug lol.. Its important stuff really. Its sorta hard to flesh it out entirely if you have already removed the post but it can be done.
sophisticated jane doe over at fightcopyrighttrolls does great work in this space as well.

 

Here is a standard letter someone else got from them it is pretty much the same one I got a few small thing have changed

http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/dmca/SandersLawPLLC-JessicaSimpson/SandersLawPLLC-20130723-JessicaSimpson.pdf

 

Interesting. There are a few threats in there that sound like a bit of a stretch.

I see the image here http://www.wetpaint.com/news/galler...essica-simpson-goes-to-the-gym-on-july-2-2012

but seemingly credited to someone else. I will send this off to a few folks to see what they have to say about it.

EDIT: If I had to hazard a guess we will be hearing a lot more about these folks. I thought a range of things they said in the pdf where pretty suspect.

http://www.iptrademarkattorney.com/...o-agency-bwp-dmca-17-usc-512-safe-harbor.html

 

From what I am hearing they only hit up people who run small sites hoping to find someone who has no idea what the DMCA law is and just pays these fools $250 to $500

I sent them a email stating that I removed the image my site was not hosting the image and my site is not hosted in the US. I also stated 2 US cases that said hyperlinking images is not illegal. Now I will see what happens I hope that is enough to scare them off.

 

I would not speak to them at all quite frankly but keep us posted. Its crazier than I thought. I have been googling the company itself. It seems folks figured them out last year but they are still ramping things up.

They will be famous in a not so good way pretty quickly.
Nigel

 

They are now working with Fameflynet now they seem to work with a group for a few months then find somone else who is willing to be apart of there scam

 

"I would not speak to them at all"

^ Eaxctly. That's the route to take for now.

FYI: Having the site hosted outside the USA doesn't matter much if you are located in the USA. They come after you, not a site. Too many people are blind to this fact.

 

I received a notice from Sanders Law a couple of weeks ago demanding $1500 because I had used an image in our news blog. I asked a lawyer for advice (most will give free consults) and they said to definitely not ignore them because they sometimes do file lawsuits. Either way you take a risk, but if you ignore it they could definitely take you to court.

 

Did you own copyright to that image or just lift it illegally from another site?

 

The image wasn't copyrighted at the time my news site posted it - and the source from where we got the image was another popular news blog. Essentially, every "superhero/geek" news website posted the photo.

 

How do you know it was not copyrighted?

 

Because I looked up the date it was copyrighted and it was copyrighted 30 days after it hit the internet. Technically a creator has the right to copyright things for a certain amount of time after it was created and this falls into that time range. However, what these law firms do is search for images that have spread widely on the internet by unsuspecting news blogs, then they only copyright it if they know they can send out several demand letters and try to get money from people.

 

You have a poor comprehension of copyright law. As soon as a work is created, the creator owns the copyright!

 

The creator still has to register it for it become "copyrighted". I understand how the process works. You clearly have never dealt with a "copyright troll" or else you would comprehend the situation. So are you going to offer any advice or continue belittling someone who came to a forum for help?

 

Bullshit. That is not close to being true. Talk to a copyright lawyer.

 

You do not have a clue what you are talking about. Everything you wrote about copyright law is wrong.

 

agreed; that would explain why they getting sued if that is their level of comprehension of copyright law!