Phil2511

I have a dispute over photos on my site.

The same photos are hosted on the site of my competition by the owner of the photos. Who had sent me them privately over Msn Messenger almost 2 years ago and i posted them recently into the photo gallery on my site.

the owner of the photos is never online now. But on Christmas Eve my competitor posted on his forum that i have stolen photos and linked to each individual image that he states is stolen.

yesterday he posted a statement saying that he has emailed the owner and that they had not given permission for me to TAKE THE IMAGES FROM HIS SITE Note his wording here

He is threatening legal action etc and to sue me for 5 years at $2500 for each image used. He has been given a link to my DMCA statement and has yet to contact me directly choosing to email other people privately who are then relaying the info on to myself.

I am in UK and my site is hosted with a Canadian company
He is in california USA and he subhosts from another man in USA i think the server is hosted in Mexico but this is not certain.

He is obviously pissed at my site as it is effecting his greatly.

He dropped in 1 Serp from result 3 to 44 last i checked. and his daily hits have dropped from minimum 22,000 a day to closer to 9,000 to 12,000 a day and his forum is almost dead getting perhaps 10 posts a day and from the same few people always. where as my forum has got over 5000 posts since september.

There were some photos on my site that were uploaded and he claimed ownership and i could not show otherwise so i removed them.

The other point i would want to ask is if anyone knows.

I was formerly a member on this other forum and uploaded some photos to the gallery there. I have yet never asked for them to be removed and the owner recently has used 2 of these images to make a new banner for his theme.

My friend/unofficial partner also had uploaded many photos that are now on my site.

he requested that they along with any other material of his be removed from this other site some months ago. As yet they remain there.

Does anyone know the legal status of my questions and what is the best thing to do. Obviously to avoid serious problems and any costs.

Thanks In Advance

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Phil
My Neapolitan Mastiff Information Site

UnKnown

http://justanswer.com

i have used this site a few times for getting legal advice about my bittorrent tracker site
it cost money but its better than getting advice at a seo forum i would guess

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Webmaster Resources & Forums / Webmaster Tools & Forum / eCommerce Shopping Basket / Scene Releases

epro

If he is posting these threats publicly then he needs to anty up proof of ownership/rights otherwise he is just committing slander in my opinion. Word to the wise...always obtain proof of usage rights for ANY content you use. Good luck.

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SiteShrine

Phil2511

Thanks Guys.

to epro.

Basically that is all he has done is slander me.
No proof has been shown at all.

Prior to this he accused me on his members forum of stealing images of which i had permission to use and the origin was the image owners site.
Also 2 images sent to me in email with instructions by the owner to insert them in my site.

Since the images are not actually his and they were not taken from his site i have chosen to ignore him and his accusations.

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Phil
My Neapolitan Mastiff Information Site