It’s a crappy crappy time

First, thank you for reading my blog. Sorry to those I ghosted after my last post. You commented but I didn’t respond. What can I say? Life happens and it’s depressing, and social media (mainly Instagram) has been my escape place.

One of the reasons I’m in a slump is that I’ve been hit with a copyright claim notice from a company called PicRights…

Remember Wolf Mountain? It’s the story I posted here on my blog over four years ago (September 6, 2019), long before I changed my URL to what it is now.

Well, in one of the chapters of that short story, I shared a picture of a brown dog. Well, the email I got was from PicRights, someone who represents Warren Photographic, where the photo of that dog was from.

Although I didn’t intentionally infringe, as I told them in my response, and that I can’t get in touch with the person I got the photo from, however, as stated on their website FAQ, I will be the one dealing with the case.

I understand that, however, they claimed to have sent me an email before the one I received from them, but I never got it; I searched my inbox and found nothing. There’s no way I would ignore something this serious. (PS: I already removed it before they messaged a month later. But they have a screenshot of it on my website, so…)

Long story short, I’m not unwilling to pay, but €191 for a picture I’ll never use again is a rather heavy penalty (thanks to my financial crisis because of losing my job and slow freelance possibilities). It’s my fault for not double-checking the image I shared on my site. But with so many scammers today, and according to the extremely bad reviews on Trustpilot about this representative company, I want to be sure that what I’ll be paying goes to the right people. So I politely asked for proof or contact information of the photographer.

They never responded for an entire month (stressing me), and now they send me the exact same message stating that they’ve previously contacted me twice (inserting 2 dates) and made it sound as if I never replied to them.

The threats of legal action if I don’t pay are especially annoying. Look, I’m just a blogger. When I posted that image, I wasn’t making any money from my blog. I only recently put up a few Google ads, and even then, I keep them to a minimum because I don’t like intrusive ads on other blogs and wouldn’t want to subject my readers to that. Even now, I’m still not earning anything.

I read on Trustpilot that PicRights seemed to be targeting small bloggers and bringing up old or removed posts (like mine). Like many small bloggers, there’s no way I can afford a lawyer, and in this case, they have the upper hand. I did make that honest mistake.

What a shitty thing to face when I’m already dealing with a lot of other crises in my life. However, as I told them, I want to be sure that what I’ll be paying for goes to the right people. I’ve been scammed way too much to just trust easily now.

And just today, I read a response from them with the documents I was asking for, as I previously mentioned. I’ll pay the penalty if they can provide proof, which they did. But now I’m hoping they’ll let me pay it at a much later date (as I asked them) because €191 is two weeks’ worth of dinner for my family. And at the moment, I have zero savings while job hunting.

There are questions left to be answered in my email, but I’m so emotionally beaten at the moment and got way too much in my head to dig for answers that will most probably just go nowhere. I’m also most probably fighting a losing battle, especially after reading articles and stories from others who tried to ignore them and ended up paying more.

Besides, I’m grateful they were at least understanding of my situation and lessened my burden.

Well, that’s that. Now, all I want is to look at this beautiful photo which represents my current feeling.

Yes, it’s dark, but a with glowing light.