Picrights Reviews 246

I have just paid this company again, £180 for an image I used over 5 years ago, I was new to websites so wasn’t aware. When they first contacted me 3 years ago I paid straight away because they are very intimidating, I took the image down and now they have just contacted me again! I am so stressed by this that I am now on medication. Will they contact me again! How can people like this sleep at night. Beware and be warned that just because you have paid once, they know you’re a soft touch and will come back for you!

When I first got an email from Picrights 4 days ago I thought it was a hoax, but they seemed so convincing I was really worried. The 3 photos on my website from 2 years ago had been posted long before I took the website over. Picrights said they were acting on behalf of the copyright owner. So I removed them, spent a weekend going through old posts, checking nothing else had slipped through, contacting the previous owners of my website, emails flying everywhere, getting really anxious and stressed out as Picrights were demanding £369 in compensation. I emailed them back explaining everything. That resulted in a really long email today with 4 'legal' looking contract type documents - really intimidating stuff. Then I thought let's investigate them. Finding all these reviews on Trust Pilot has allowed me to breathe easy again. What I've now done is to email the company they say they were representing, to ask them if PicRights are acting on their behalf. I'm looking forward to their reply. If Picrights are lying, I'll be onto the Fraud investigators. I also looked at their company on Company's House. That made interesting reading too.

Do not give this company any money, do not reply or give them any information.

Put it the recycling bin

These people try and extort monies from the wrong people and have no foundation whatsoever!

Would really like to give 0 stars as the whole thing is a complete SCAM run by morally lacking individuals.
We were contacted in 2021 about 2 images on our website. I did some investigating and found that many were saying PicRights was a scam, but being relatively new to the image use legislation I was unsure as I felt that I may have got it wrong. I challenged them and they were able to convince me that in our case they were right. We negotiated and settled and both images were removed from the website. This week, we have received a letter claiming that one of the images is still on the site and that we are being fined. This correspondence has been given a new reference number which would indicate to me that it is for a new case. Given the letter relates to an image we have already removed and settled for I would have thought the reference would have been the same and that our previous communications in 2021 would have been referenced. They state in the letter that they have contacted us twice this year in relation to this image yet we have received nothing ether physically or digitally. They are trying to scam us out of more money but this time we will not fall victim to them.

Where is 0 or negative stars on here?
These crooks are so twisted minded and going after innocent people, searching high and low on how to screw someone. I have now hired a legal team (who has done their due diligence and researched them) and going after them! SCAM SCAM SCAM !!!
DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT SEND THEM A PENNY!!!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Here’s what a lawyer said on a public forum!

This is called a low-hanging fruit operation. In most cases, what PicRights is doing is malicious prosecution or abuse of process, which is not only illegal but wide open for counter-sue. Communication from their “legal team” is called malfeasance, which is both a felony and liable for permanent disbarment. Inventing a licensing fee post facto is criminal negligence.
No one can invent a licensing fee above fair market value, after the fact, and demand it from average hardworking people who never knowingly misused copyrighted original work. The mountain of evidence they would have to provide to even entertain ONE allegation of ONE misused original copyright work by ONE website is beyond their pay grades. So they don’t. They just mass mail thousands of people looking for the low hanging fruit.
And, by the by, every single one of you is protected by PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE. This does not extend to a scam company who is sending out litigious letters. They are going to get absolutely crushed.
Also, they’ve been doxed on Reddit and elsewhere.
You can expect that all parties involved in this scam will be facing prison time. If PicRights and Higbee had any legal standing, they would be going after large corporations who are actually guilty of copyright infringement and misuse, not random mom and pop non-profits. No judge on earth, no jury on earth, no court on earth, is going to rule in favor of a shakedown operation against everyday citizens.
If you have the time, counter-sue now.
I am an intellectual property lawyer. A real one.

Like many here, I wish I could give zero stars. I lost my job due to covid and I'm too old to get hired for a new job, so I tried setting up a website to sell parts. In the middle of this crisis, these hacks somehow found a file (not a web page, but a file) that i uploaded to my web publisher among other files while trying different things to figure out how this website stuff works. Anyway, my 80+ yrs old mother fainted and I took her to the ER, where they discovered she had internal bleeding and was giving her blood and trying to transfer her to a large hospital. In the middle of all this, these people sent me an email demanding I send money via Paypal for ONE picture they found on the file that's not even supposed to be a web page! I hope there's Karma and it comes back to them with a vengeance. Some things may be technically legal, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I now have a very different opinion of Canadians...

Scam and total troll company trying to steal money from people.

This company wrote me for copyright infringement for using my photos of my mission trips.
When I did research on the company, the different lawyer sites say to contact them to help negotiate a settlement for using my pictures from my camera?
Is this possible? That I could have given my rights to have my pics on my website, to some unknown entity?
Quite disconcerting for sure.
Any helpful thoughts out there in dealing with these guys.
Thx

Highly technical Trolls running a shakedown operation by predating on those too frightened not to settle. That's not us. Bring it on, please.

This company wrote to my client claiming they have been sending emails for days and now they do not want to negotiate anymore they just want payment. When my client told me I felt it in my heart that they are a scam, I researched about them and found more confirmations especially from Trustpilot.

DO NOT PAY THEM ANY MONEY, just delete the copyrighted images for safety sake and move on with your business.

This company is a complete and total troll company trying to steal money from people. A year ago we paid $250 for the use of a picture and took down all links to the pages (although we kept archive copies just in case we needed the information). We just got another request for payment for a page that is not accessible from any public page. These people are complete and total frauds, and they do not honor when they have already been paid for an image.

This company is a bottom feeder. Their reviews suck, and they have the gall to contact us for money for a picture that is open license

They are really good at carrying out a scam under the garb of being "legal". They are only third parties and have no locus standi in a matter between the user of a picture and the owner of the picture. If they collect money from either party, it can only be fees. They are not court and they are not authorised to collect damages. So make sure you never pay them unless it is an honest fee for services genuinely rendered by them. But honest they are not as you can see from the other reviews. Once everyone knows about their "honesty" I hope they can be pushed out. I suggest to them to attempt something else instead of trying to loot honest people.

PicRights.com is a total scam. The positive reviews here are fake. PicRights does NOT give photographers a single cent. While what they do isn't illegal, it is absolutely unethical.
They sent my client such an email, regarding a pic from pixelbay. They claimed it belonged to AFP, a French company. The article was written is early June, the AFP ownership claim is June 15th 2022. So, it was on Pixelbay before they owned it.
Either way, the image doesn't exist on the site. They sent a photoshopped image of the alleged use. I wrote them back and they said they will just turn this over to law firm of Higbee and Associates and all previous offers to resolve have been withdrawn.
I made a fraud claim at ICANN. I suggest everyone do the same.

'PicRights International' fraudulently claimed copyright ownership on an image that I know they do not have, as I personally know the copyright owner. I received an email from resolve [at] picrights.com that claimed that several images were used in violation, including the one that is clearly not theirs to claim. After challenging them, they just stopped writing. My guess is that they are just crawling and storing images on the web, then matching them up with Google's image match algorithm and sending threatening emails that clearly are not DMCA Take Down Requests due to the perjury and fraud clause in legal DMCA requests, hoping that a small percentage of the recipients will just pay quietly. Do with this information what you will and good luck dealing with these people!

Worse ever company. They do not have any quality deal with customers.

Absolutely foul company. As per the paper correspond they sent Couple of email for the photo never used. Sent similar company name for us. When I sent got a letter by post, I tried to phone them. No answer. I sent them an email explaining my position. No reply.

Do not pay at all.