On the Guardian web site I came across this story of a photo agency (Getty Images) demanding money with menaces from a church which had used two images on its web site.

This is an example of the copyfight in action, and the high-handed, small-minded tactics of the old media powerhouses in responding to the use of copyright material.

Nobody disputes the fact that the web designer shouldn’t have used the images. On the other hand, the web designer was living in the real world, where images are splashed all over the web and used all the time by individuals and small organisations with no malice, and to no profitable end. The church wasn’t making money off the images, but as an official body probably should have paid.

In fact, they offered to pay a fair price, the sort of price (a couple of hundred quid) they’d have had to pay if they’d done things properly in the first place, but Getty wouldn’t negotiate, and continued to demand six thousand pounds.

Snip:

Dozens of small businesses and charities tell similar stories. On the online forums run by the Federation of Small Businesses, copyright infringement blows away every other subject. Many of those posting on the federation's forum have tried to do everything right; they aren't arguing about copyright. It's the enforcement tactics they find objectionable. Two years ago Brian Weir of Toucher Web Design received a letter from another picture agency, Corbis, via the law firm Baker & McKenzie, accusing him of stealing a vector graphic and demanding £2,400.