While his article talks about "commercial infringement", his FAQ doesn't say that he's restricting his suits to people who are using his work commercially, which is really interesting. In principle he could be suing a lot of people, which is great for him and a great way to subsidize an unusual and interesting creative endeavor.
I assume that Wild has registered copyright on all his works so that his firm can sue for statutory damages (easy) rather than actual damages (harder to prove).
Suppose Wild is reading Quora answers about insects and notices that someone has left a comment where they pasted in a photo from his Web site. Super easy to do. Also super easy for him to send an e-mail to his copyright contractor, and a free $750 (minimum) in statutory damages.
I have registered copyright on works before, very straightforward, opens some unusual opportunities. There's actually a great startup idea here:
(1) Create a large quantity of high-quality unwatermarked stock images.
(2) Register copyright on each work.
(3) Sell them on a web site and use search-engine marketing tactics to make it a really high ranking Web site.
(4) Wait 2.9 years, then sue every Web site and user who picked up the images.
I assume that Wild has registered copyright on all his works so that his firm can sue for statutory damages (easy) rather than actual damages (harder to prove).
Suppose Wild is reading Quora answers about insects and notices that someone has left a comment where they pasted in a photo from his Web site. Super easy to do. Also super easy for him to send an e-mail to his copyright contractor, and a free $750 (minimum) in statutory damages.
I have registered copyright on works before, very straightforward, opens some unusual opportunities. There's actually a great startup idea here:
(1) Create a large quantity of high-quality unwatermarked stock images. (2) Register copyright on each work. (3) Sell them on a web site and use search-engine marketing tactics to make it a really high ranking Web site. (4) Wait 2.9 years, then sue every Web site and user who picked up the images.