I admin a photo blog, users submit photos to post on there, whether they are celeb/athlete/music whatever. I received a copyright claim on one of the images posted last year sometime. It has no tags on it, no copyrights/watermarked or anything... The person that sent me the copyright claim is sending and invoice expecting payment for the time it was used... How would anyone best determine I respond? It's not the image was intentionally stolen... it was user submitted and I posted it. Once I got the report I removed it..?
lol just ignore the fool. If you didn't sell anything you'll be fine. I mean it's just a blog. Tell him to put watermarks on his stuff and make a joke.
His claim was because his image was on a site that included advertisements (claiming i was using his image to profit)
Images do not have to have any watermark on them. You posted the photo, your site is technically liable as you are responsible for all content you post. Most people don't sue because of the cost, but some do. You can either ignore it, or pay the usage fee (assuming they are the legal owner of the image). You could also explain your situation, but it isn't going to be a legal defense.
I don't believe the person sent me any kind of DMCA thing, he just sent me a message saying it was his image, and he attached an invoice as well as pointing out specifically the image in question. I promptly removed the image, and told him it was user submitted with no copyright information provided during the submission of it. He is claiming that I still owe money for the amount of time it was on my site because I have ads on there with I profit from.... he is requesting almost $900
Nobody has to send a DMCA notice prior to suing for copyright infringement unless the alleged infringer is a service provider who has added their name to the government list of participating service providers. Sending a notice is only a courtesy, though it can also help establish that an unprotected infringer knew what they were doing was infringement. The original poster's best bet is to contact a local attorney skilled in intellectual property law and determine how he should respond to the person whose copyrighted content he infringed upon.