Website Owner Beware Part 2
In my previous post I warned the WA community about a law firm threatening website owners, bloggers and folks with social media accounts with lawsuits for copyright infringement violations. Hopefully you read the post and shared it with others because if this firm targets you it may very well have a negative impact on your financial situation.
The law firm I refer to is Higbee & Associates in California. The founder is Mathew K. Higbee from what I have been able to learn on the internet.
In my previous post I described the threatening letter I received from this law firm.
In this post I want to update what additional information I have learned about Higbee & Associates Law Firm and none of it is good.
I found a number of posts on a website by the name of complaintsBoard.com regarding the Higbee Law Firm, but this one in particular I am pasting below is especially of interest. If you want to learn more you can search Higbee & Associates at the complaintsBoard.com website.
Post from ComplaintsBoard.com website:
Anne7213Aug 24, 2018
Do not confuse creativecommons.org with creative-commons-images.com. Creative Commons (the non-profit organization) is not affiliated with the scam website Creative Commons Images.
Mathew K. Higbee, Nick Youngson, RM Media Ltd, and Alpha Stock Images are perpetrating a creative commons extortion scam using the Creative Commons Images website.
Creative Commons is an American non-profit organization.
Creative Commons licenses require that users provide attribution to the creator when the material is used and shared. A Creative Commons license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon creative works (photos, images, etc.) as long as credit is given to the creator. Typically, attribution consists of displaying the image title, author, source (often including a website link) and license in a reasonable manner.
Creative Commons offers licenses and tools to the public free of charge and does not require that creators or other rights holders, such as licensees, register with Creative Commons in order to apply a Creative Commons license to a work. Therefore, image licensees have not formal license documentation---no proof of registration, no receipts, etc.
Higbee and Youngson abuse the copyright laws by filing copyright registrations over effortless and mundane images. They then make those images available for free on creative-commons-images.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 3.0) in exchange for "attribution". The images are owned by Mr. Youngson. Rights managed licenses for those same images for a fee on Alpha Stock Images website.
The Creative Commons Images attribution requirements and guidelines are purposefully convoluted, difficult to follow and change frequently. They do this so they can later 'catch' people using the photos without proper attribution. Then use the Higbee & Associates law firm to bully victims with scare tactics and harassment in order to extract money to “settle” purported copyright claims with damages of up to $150, 000.
The Creative Commons Images website (creative-commons-images.com) is owned and operated by RM Media Ltd (rmmedia.ltd.uk), a UK-based corporation founded by Nick Youngson (nyphotographic.com), which also does business as Alpha Stock Images (alphastockimages.com).
Mathew K. Higbee lives at 3409 Calle Del Torre in Las Vegas, NV and is registered to vote as a Republican in the State of Nevada. His main office is located in a small strip mall office suite located at 1504 Brookhollow Drive in Santa Ana, California. He has set up virtual office addresses in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Washington State. When you look at these "office locations" on Google maps you can see that they are also just tiny office buildings--one is shared with a barber shop. If you Google the addresses you'll see dozens, if not hundreds, of other business using the same addresses as virtual offices to make themselves look legitimate or large.
The "Ripoff report" also has some posts referencing the Higbee Law Firm's practices:
https://www.ripoffreport.com/report/higbee-associates-law-fi...
There are also references to the Higbee & Associates Law Firm at The "Debanked" website:
https://debanked.com/2018/04/usury-suit-by-higbee-associates...
Here is another website by the name of "TechDirt" with even more references about Higbee & Associates:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190213/18080341591/calli...
If you Google Higbee & Associates you will find a lot of results.
Again....I am putting this out here because all of us in the WA community are aspiring online entrepreneurs and so all of us may be targets of the Higbee & Associates Law Firm.
I do not want anyone in the WA community to be targeted so PLEASE take this post seriously!
Recent Comments
6
Wow. Here's another sad part, I highly doubt these guys are alone. They probably "stole" the idea from another scam company (s).
It shows we all need to be super vigilant with our online businesses. Your example shows something like this can happen to any one of us.
Thanks for sharing!
Higbee & Associates is not alone, but are one of the top 3 firms. I have no problem with the owner of a photograph going after someone if the person or persons using it knowingly are using a copyrighted photo image for commercial gain. A photographer should be paid for their work.
What I take issue with in our case is "The Daily Beast" interviewed my wife and published an article about her and accompanying the article was a photo with a photo of her book superimposed upon it.
When she asked who created the superimposed photo the reporter for "The Daily Beast" told her "The Daily Beast" Art Department created the photo images so as far as we knew the photo image we received and used in the article was the property of "The Daily Beast".
"The Daily Beast" never told us the original image was not one of their photographer's creations. They never once said they did not own the rights to the photo image the picture of my wife's book was superimposed upon.
Now however, we have learned from the Art Department Manager of "The Daily Beast" that "The Daily Beast" reporter was incorrect to a degree when she told my wife their art department created the images.
The Art Department Manager has now informed us that the photo image my wife's book was superimposed upon was licensed from Getty Images.
And According to the Art Department Manager...AFP syndicates their photo images out through Getty Images and "The Daily Beast" licensed the background photo image from Getty Images.
So as you can see this is a very convoluted chain of ownership and licenses which is hard to even imagine thus, something that blindsides innocent parties being threatened with a law suit.
For God's sake! This article was about my wife and her book! The image she received from "The Daily Beast" reporter had her book featured in it. Who on earth wold think there would be an issue especially, since the reporter told her "The Daily Beast" Art Department created it?
Not to mention that within a couple weeks after she had the image on her website she received an email demanding she take down the image or suffer legal consequences so she removed the image immediately.
Now...over a year after the image was removed we still receive a threat of legal action. The lowest cost we have been quoted by a copyright lawyer to defend this is $10,000 and that is if all goes smoothly.
There are several law firms around the country doing this. What is sad is they do indeed apparently have free reign to threaten suit for companies like Getty Images, Agence French Presse, picrights, etc.
Unfortunately, they are also going after folks even if the picture has NOT been copyright protected knowing 80% of the folks they send letters to do not have the money or the knowledge to fight back so they pay the $2k-$5k ransom. The founder of Higbee & Associates even revels in the fact they know 80% will just pay ransom versus fight.
I am all for protecting a photographer’s right to be paid for their work
However, In our case the picture we used was given to us by The Daily Beast who interviewed my wife about her book.
The Daily Beast Reporter told us the image accompanying the article about my wife’s book was created by the Daily Beast Photography Department and it featured the cover of my wife’s book in the image.
I have asked the Higbee Law firm to provide the copyright registration certificate and deposits made when submitting the application as the image is of my wife’s book and so far crickets.
What an upside down world we live in...
I apologize. Looks like I had already replied to your reply. Sorry for repeating. Just burns me up that bottom feeders like this are allowed to continue practicing law (if you can call it that).