So this is a weird one. I got an email from Copytrack the other night saying that their "client" claimed I was using a photo on the Khoras website without permission. They said to resolve the legal dispute, I would have to take down the photo and pay them about 400 euro. Oh, this was apparently in the courts of Germany.
Copytrack is real company, but the whole thing smelled of a scam. I did a little research and found a Reddit page where people were saying the same thing happened to them. Claims of copyright infringement of a photo, same client, same claim that it was under the rules and courts of Germany, etc. Most of the people in the Reddit discussion were saying the same thing... "it's a scam, fuck 'em".
That made me feel a little better, but I was still wary. The photos on the site have come from many sources. Some of them I took myself. Some are Photoshop work or AI generated. Some were given to me by friends from their vacations abroad. I've purchased many of the images at stock image libraries like iStockPhoto. As far as I know, every single photo on this website is legit and legal. However, I haven't done a great job of TRACKING where I got all the photos. This whole incident got me thinking that I should start getting organized and track the source of every photo on the site. And that's just what I've started doing.
This will be a long project, but in just a few nights, I've successfully tracked more than half the photos. iStockPhoto luckily tracks all your past downloads.
And it turns out, the very photo I was accused of stealing by Copytrack and their client was in the list. I have ironclad proof that I legally purchased that specific photo from iStockPhoto. So, yeah, fuck 'em. It is a scam. I think they probably do this to many websites hoping to scare the webmaster into paying them 400 euro or whatever they are claiming.
Despite having put this to rest, I'm going to finish this project. I'm going to slowly track down the source of every photo used on this site. It'll probably take months. Those that I can't track down, I'll replace with a new photo. But eventually, I want to have detailed notes on where every single photo came from. I don't ever again what to be accused of copyright infringement.
Gah, fucking copyright trolls.
But yes, I concur; having ironclad sourcing for everything on the site is a best practice, and will save you the worry if something like this happens again.