[WikiEN-l] More fair use image overreaching

[Ray Saintonge]

geni wrote:
> On 03/03/2008, WJhonson at aol.com <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>   
>> Just to address the "lawyers are not required to send a 'takedown'  notice"
>>
>>  By this I assume BC means a "cease and desist".  I believe this is de  facto
>>  false.  While it is true a lawyer could file a suit for anything, any  case
>>  being brought, without having made any preliminary action to correct the  issue,
>>  would be, imho, thrown out of court.
>>
>>  The first thing a judge looks at is, "have you attempted to correct this  out
>>  of court" ?  That is did you make any attempt to settle this without  wasting
>>  the court's time ?
>>     
> Unfortunately they can demand money as part of their attempt to settle
> out of court.  A few hundred dollars is not unusual (see people
> moaning about picscout). A few hundred per pics so say about a million
> for 2K images. Of course that is rather less than you risk ending up
> paying if you take is to court.
>   
This presupposes that stupidity is a herd phenomenon.  If the demand for 
a settlement is not made in a proper way they can be charged with 
extortion.  Using your figures, one needs to assume that 2,000 cases 
will be launched at virtually the same time.  Otherwise, really losing a 
small handful of cases would have led to behaviour modification that 
would have forestalled the others.  Ten cases would strrike me as 
already beyond the limits of reality.  10 x $500 = $5,000 at most!  We 
don't even want to lose that many, but we have to consider the 
possibility in the course of analyzing risks.  If the costs of managing 
the risk are going to be far in excess of the estimated risk, the risk 
is easily worth taking.

Ec