Don’t take it personally; just remove the images if you don’t have a valid license to use them; keep a low profile, and try to fly under their radar (IOW, I wouldn’t even respond to any phone calls or letters), and hope it goes away (the old “Cheers” character Sam Malone’s philosophy; ignore a problem long enough and it goes away) FYI, NCS Recovery is one of the largest “letter writing” collection agencies; they really don’t do much more than that, and no, they’re not going to sue you for a couple thousand dollars.

buy a decent router, and learn about decent webbrowsing/net-trafficking.

and it’s not like routers are expensive or responsible net use is difficult.

Finding out the hard way, I came to learn that two of the images on my site had not been paid for and were apparently Getty Images. The letters immediately started flowing and I immediately wrote back, informing them that I had since taken the images down, offering an apology for the misunderstanding, and suggesting that they make available the very technology that “caught” me and others using their images illegally, so that we can all make sure that we don’t do it in the future.

Of course, no consideration was offered for my letter, my corrective action, nor the suggestion that I made. Instead, more threatening letters ensued…

Then, I was handed over to NCS Recovery. They immediately started with the threatening calls. For a while, I didn’t answer the phone. Then, one day, I picked up the phone and politely asked them to stop calling me. I explained that I know that as a collections agency they have to respect my request to stop calling me. And guess what? Not only have I not had a call since (4-5 months now), but there has been no follow-up whatsoever.

I am not an attorney, and I can’t be 100% certain (I don’t think that even attorney’s in this field can be), but once it is handed over to a collection’s agency, I am pretty sure that it isn’t going to go anywhere. Collections agencies rarely take people to court. And if they do, it has to be for a big sum of money and the case has got to be a slam dunk (which would make you think that if the case was a slam dunk, it would never have been handed over to the collections agency in the first place). Collections agencies try to scare people into paying, but their bark is rarely ever backed up with a bite.

In my case, I am considering this matter closed. I am also doing everything within my power to steer people away from using getty and istockphoto.com (wholey owned by getty). Ironically, I had been using istockphoto prior to this whole rediculous ordeal. Not surprisingly, I have since stopped.

I cannot think of a more stupid, bird-brained idea as to play hard ball with (inevitably) some of the people that are your actual customers. Biting the hand that feeds them is an understatement.

I wish you folks the best of luck. I believe that most of you did not intend to steal anything and that this undoubtedly just caused you more stress at a time when (economically) you could have easily done without it.

I wish getty images much grief for their selfish, cowardly act. And may this grief come in the form of missed business opportunities, increased expenses, and (hopefully) an ultimate demise of the company and the positions held by the greedy executives who made these cowardly decisions to extort well-meaning individuals.