Archive for category You can’t make this up

“99% of all Lawyers Give the Rest a Bad Name” – Steven Wright

If you get a letter from a lawyer, again, DO NOT ANSWER IT YOURSELF. See a trusted local lawyer. Here the client almost paid $5,000 for nothing other than to fill the pockets of some lawyers preying on the uninformed.

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Pandemic Predators Part 2

The below scenario is not a “one off”. Ed has received more than a few calls on a rather simple con that most grifters would pay tribute to terming it “elegant”.  Simple, effective and most victims never see it coming until after it’s over. One of the reasons is that it’s been perpetuated by recognizable, […]

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Big Mistakes Into Small Opportunities

The two of us love great quotes, like almost every quoted line in Young Frankenstein (what’s not to love). Here’s one by the great writer Henry James (1843 – 1916) that is not as famous as Igor’s “What hump?”, but probably more meaningful for this column – “She had an unequalled gift, usually pen in […]

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Fool’s Gold – Part 2

And so, the story continues. 4. Does Their Pitch Make Sense? “You keep using that word, I do not think It means what you think it means”.  – says Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) from the classic film, “The Princess Bride”. It is an invaluable phrase to call out someone’s incorrect use of a word, phrase or concept. Use of […]

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Trolls Who Live Under Bridges Upset By Judge’s Comparison

Here’s an example of why even Ed is not a fan of lawyers in general.  You’ll never find him having a beer with an adversary either. In a copyright infringement case brought in the Federal Court in Manhattan – formally The United States District Court for The Southern District of New York, entitled Matthew McDermott […]

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But I Own the Copyright!

We read a thread online about the “merits” of stock agencies. To us that could have been a one-sentence story, but we digress. In the comments section someone said how they owned the copyright and could pursue an infringer. Again, that falls into the category of “Ya didn’t read the fine print, didja?” We’ve seen […]

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Both Flirting And Dancing With Danger

So how’s this for irony? April is Copyright Awareness Month according to the April issue of PPA’s Professional Photographer Magazine. Terrific, photographers and artists need all the awareness and information about copyright they can get. Anything that spreads awareness of the truth is always positive. But something struck us as, well, a bit odd. The […]

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Readers Beware, Lawyers Are Not Judges

The photo website, Petapixel, recently ran an article on a photo that was allegedly copied by a pharmaceutical company in Germany. The usual cesspool of bad information and tribal wisdom was sprinkled in the comments section. Petapixel to their credit ran a follow up piece, written by a lawyer. A lawyer in Memphis, whose trial […]

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False Prophets and Lost Profits

The bible warns, “beware false prophets”. As we like to rephrase it, beware some lawyers as false prophets, as they will diminish your profits. Our story starts with Ed suing a stock agency on behalf of a photographer who claimed that he/she had not been paid nor received royalty statements. (Something he has done too […]

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The Highsmith vs Getty Saga Begins

Jerry Seinfield showed us that a TV show about nothing could be worth something, like more than 3 Billion (with a capital B) dollars. That’s the syndication revenue from 1995 to 2014 as referenced here. We now see a lawsuit, Carol M. Highsmith v. Getty Images (and others including Picscout which Getty owns) seeking one […]

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