Since a couple of you have web-sites and blogs too, it may be worth sharing a shake-down I'm currently struggling with.
When setting up my site a year ago, I used photos of things I'd been involved with and one was of an airplane after a foreign accident. I'm pretty sure I took the photo and definitely was a part of the Government investigation. As usual, the Govt (in this case a foreign one) provided a lot of our photos to the press because media are not allowed on accident sites and while governments do not copyright photos and retains usage rights, the press MAY copyright them when they do distribution. When I made my site, I used a copy of that photo off the web and knew enough to not use one with a copyright marking. So I took the photo, it was a Govt photo, and the one I used had no marks. What could go wrong?
Fast forward and I recently got a copyright infringement notice with a claim for $710 from a Canadian company called PicRights. While first thinking this is a scam, then Googling after their 3rd notice and threat of legal action by their California partner Higbee & Associates, it turns out this is a very legal shake-down. PicRights has a web-crawler that searches for use of photos published by Agence France Press (AFP) and AFP had published the same Govt photo I used. It doesn't matter to them if mine has no marking or not, they have claimed copyright and I just joined a long list of other victims in this. It turns out that people have taken PicRights to court and LOST!!!
https://copyright-demand-letter.com/picrights-ltd-copyright-letters-making-noise-in-the-us/#comment-839
These ass-wipes are so prolific and this is so crazy that there is a competing legal group just to fight them!
https://copyright-demand-letter.com/higbee-associates-copyright/
As a result, I ended up re-populating my website with almost entirely new photos that I can show source on, mainly from Government dockets (I took and placed almost every one there) or my own personal photos. I've also asked the foreign Government for a release on the photo to hopefully negate this whole claim, but if they can't get back by the due date, my other half who is a lawyer says that the best outcome will be to just ought to negotiate a settlement (guessing around $350-400?), pay up, and move on.
Bottom line is to be extremely aware of the photos you are using on your web-sites and blogs, because knowingly being raped SUCKS.