Further to my post of a few days ago and after several emails between myself and StockFood Ltd as well as our Business Solicitor I have today paid the sum of £50 to end the matter.  Less than the £72.20 they wanted (if paid within 14 days of their letter!) and slightly more than the £30 I offered to pay, but it is done, finished and hopefully I will never hear from them again.

Our Solicitor’s view was that they should only be due the £19 which is the License fee and the rest of the charges they were “trying it on” and that he believes there are images out there put as “traps” so this company make money out of it, which I believe but they of course, deny.  They did not prove to me that they or the photographer actually own the copyright and if I had a lot more time and money I would not have paid, but I don’t so have resolved it.

However please be aware that no image, no matter whether it has meta data on about the original owner or not, or comes from a website/Pinterest/Google et al, is not copyright free.  If you use it, even if your blog makes no money and does not benefit in any way from using the image, you are still liable and may end up paying like me.

Please be assured that I never intended to breach anyone’s copyright and  it was a pure mistake, one which I will not repeat.

So I have learnt my lesson and will not now use any image, no matter how cute or appropriate, to decorate my blog posts unless I or my family have taken it.  I have spent several hours going through all of my old posts removing pictures so I am sorry if you are looking at anything older and there are gaps or something does not make sense but  I have had to do this as I cannot afford to be paying anyone else and boosting their profits!

I have deleted my old blog from Google Blogspot as I cannot afford to have anything on there be subject to this copyright issue and do not have time to go through it.  Anyway it has been five years since I have been on WordPress so it is about time the old one was deleted, although people did still read it!

Thank you to all my Followers who contacted me regarding this nasty business and all your lovely comments, you don’t know how much you all mean to me.  I am glad this has been resolved before the weekend and I will be back on Monday to blogging every day.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

Hugs, Susie xx