Have you received a threatening email from a bunch of asshats calling themselves CopyTrack of Germany? For any readers clicking on here to get the lowdown on CopyTrack after having received, like me, a demand for payment over alleged copyright infringement, well strap your ass in, and if foul language isn’t your thang, I’ll tell you now: it’s a load of tosh and you shouldn’t engage with the bumfisters. No need for me to say anything further; you can click off here and go do something far more interesting if you wish.
For those still lurking, I’ll show you the inside track on CopyTrack’s cack.
In October 2025, this fucking nonsense landed in my junk email.
This pish goes on to give a price to make the scary stuff all go away, that price being the oddball figure of 389.59 Euros to licence the disputed image per annum with another 350 Euros to cover prior use to keep whoever "Yayimages" are placated.
Because this missive landed in my spam folder it was stripped of images, so I didn’t know what picture Ze Germans claimed to be in contention. I saw that it linked to my Onlyfans page which is an image heavy resource on my website that lists all my vlogual videos, and seeing as I’ve always either made my own images, used a still from the video itself, or appointed my in-house artist to create my thumbnails, my initial response was to raise my monobrow over the legitimacy of their claim, and to quite literally tell these window lickers to go "suck my balls".
I later realised that the image they’re moaning about is this 320x180 snap used some months earlier for my vlog discussing the demise of a company called SBS.
This particular pic is one of merely a handful I’ve purchased in my time; my in-house artist being unavailable on the day for what was a quick turnaround on a topical vlog. What CopyTrack have done here is to undertake a reverse image scrape of my website where they’ve stumbled upon the above and correctly identified it as an image not in the public domain. But here’s the thing: I purchased it from Shutterstock, licensed as it is for commercial use under their terms and uploaded by a contributer named No**a Cor**s, so why does the CopyTrack email claim they’re acting on behalf of some asshole called "YayImages”, going on to state that “we have been informed that David Savery Electrical Services UK is likely using an image without permission”?
Informed by whom and why do they think it’s likely used without permission?
Okay, so it’s no longer the original Shutterstock image out-of-the-box as I’ve edited it by flipping it and adding SBS's logo to the prow of the boat, and maybe that’s what they’re targeting – an image match where the metadata doesn’t add up because this isn’t the original digital file as purchased. Perhaps their bot scraped my site, came up with a close match, and they figured I’d been up to no good, maybe editing out watermarks or whatever, so it was enough to chance their arm on, but who even are Yayimages who claim to be the rights holder in this case?
This is red flag number one. CopyTrack clearly don’t know I’m using the image legitimately, albeit admittedly not quite in its original form, so their email is simply a punt to see if I’ll blindly panic and pay. CopyTrack’s business model assumes most will cough up to make scary legal threats go away, followed by their victims either changing the image for something less contentious, or forking out to these wankers for what they believe to be legitimate ongoing use, because remember, CopyTrack are demanding nearly 390 Euros for what appears to be an annual fee if the image stays in place.
Also, Germany? Really? Not that I voted for it, but the UK isn’t even in the fucking EU anymore and if these assclowns were in any way legitimate, they’d be writing to me at my valid business postal address and taking me on in my own country’s legal system. Email threats are a nonsense – this one had already landed in my spam, and had I not gone fiddling with my junk (so to speak), it would have been binned automatically after thirty days. Email is no guarantee of delivery, so if you get such a message from these assholes, simply delete the fucking thing and pay it no mind because by not responding, they have no legal proof you ever laid eyeballs their demand.
But y’know, I like a bit of a fight, so I wanted to see where this went. All I have so far is an email claiming CopyTrack represent Yayimages, whoever they’re supposed to be, and they’re insisting I bung hundreds of Euro’s their way. So, what shit do these monkey’s fling forth when they literally get told to "fuck off"?
Okay, well I already told them to suck my balls, so if they can’t figure out my gender from that then I guess the responses to my insults will all be stock tosh, but that’s alright Cole, I can play the long game. The important thing here is that the onus to prove legitimate image use isn’t on me; CopyTrack are the ones claiming to represent a rights holder while accusing me of not having permission to use the image, and they’re the ones demanding payment. If they’re legitimate then I can supply proof of my Shutterstock purchase, although if they truly represent the rights holder, surely they can confirm for themselves I bought the damn thing through Shutterstock? The fact they seemingly can’t do this betrays their claim as bogus. I’m under no obligation to prove to anyone, aside from Shutterstock or No**a Cor**s, that the image was paid for.
Upon demanding to see some bona fides from CopyTrack, I received the following...
Fucks sake Cole, you know I'm a geezer. Drop the "Sir or Madam" salutation!
CopyTrack seem desperate for me to log into their portal, which of course will never happen; my only interaction with these pricks will be via email. But, okay, let’s look at the A1 bang-to-rights and irrefutable evidence that these cocksuckers are relying on which, after some insults flung forth from my end, has yielded this pish…
Let’s pick the fucking popcorn out of this turd. First, who the hell are Doublesix Ltd? The prior emails I’d received listed some asshole outfit going by the mincer moniker of 'Yayimages'. Second, these fuckoids list the author of the image is ‘Clivia’ – aside from sounding like a sexually transmitted disease, what even is that? An individual? An organisation? It’s sure as shit not No**a Cor**s as listed on my Shutterstock purchase page, so who, or what, is a fucking Clivia?
Next, Alex Golke… well who is this little wanker? Golke? It sounds like the involuntary glottal sound your mum occasionally makes whilst choking on my hard-on. I mean, come on, am I supposed to take this seriously? The fact they’ve even been shit-stupid enough to use a fucking font to make the signature appear handwritten reminds me of the fake stamp the BBC use on their bullshit licence fee letters like it’s all been individually signed and sealed and isn’t actually at all mass produced and printed to look officious whilst lacking any balls whatsoever. This has got SCAM written all over it!
My retort to their last missive ended as follows:
To which our friend, Cole Reed, seemingly thick as fuck as he still can’t figure out my fucking gender, replied with:
At this point, I figured it wasn’t worth speaking with them further. I mean, it’s so obviously baseless and pathetically desperate. If one simply doesn’t engage with these pricks, then they have nothing and can do nothing. They continued messaging however, their final communication in November reading as follows…
Legal Department? Ah, shit. What happened to Cole? I rather liked the personal touch of his gender confusion, yet now I’m dealing with a faceless legal department, presumably deliberately depersonalised in a last ditch effort to make me concerned enough that, in the face of an anonymous onslaught, I’ll simply shit my pants, roll over and hand forth fistfuls of cash, however CopyTrack have failed to recognise two things: firstly, as a Britisher, I’m a stubborn alcoholic foul-mouthed bastard, and secondly, the last time I checked, it was two-world-wars-and-one-world-cup between our great nations, although admittedly, I haven’t paid much attention to war nor sport for some time and I’m not actually sure if that is still the case. Nonetheless, if I’m getting fucked by a German, it had better be a 120-kilogramme wench by the name of Waltrund who happens to have tits weighing more than my children and a fucking litre of Lowenbrau in each hand whilst she piledrives my raging raw schnitzelwurst.
So, I left the ball in their court. Alex Golke thinks he owns this fucking image; well let that knobend formally go to the expense of prosecution to prove I’m not supposed to be using it. Only then will I provide my Shutterstock receipt and licence to be using this image on the internet.
And that’s where it died with no further comms received in the past nine months. CopyTrack aren’t going to spend any actual money on legal action, both because they’re not rights holders for the actual image in the first place, and because they don’t know for sure if my use of said image is legitimate or not, me being under no obligation whatsoever to prove anything unless it’s done formally and at their expense if they really want to push it. They hoped I’d simply throw money at them, but they aren’t going down the legal road on anyone unless they have fireproof evidence that an image legitimately owned by one of their clients, if they even have any clients, is being used dishonestly. Without having access to the likes of Shutterstock’s customer database, they know nothing and are just chancing their arm based on a bot scraping of any given website.
Again, the golden rule here is that email threats are a nonsense; you simply don’t respond to such. If they really want to come at you, they’ll have to go to the expense of posting a written communication to your physical address in the confidence they’re in a legally sound position. These dickheads won’t, because ultimately, they have nothing and can prove nothing.
That said, if you are using licensed images without having coughed up the green, either buy ‘em or replace ‘em with something else. Stock image sites are being fisted by AI image generation; one of the providers I’ve used in the past, Canstockphoto in Canada, shut up shop after nearly twenty years because AI ate their lunch. Stealing the artwork of others isn’t cool, and although I’ve used AI image generation myself, I still use my in-house artist as much as possible. It just looks better to have your own artwork.
Also, she’s my daughter, so I’m kind of obliged to chuck work her way, but c’mon, credit’s where it’s due. And fuck these guys for trying to falsely cash in for their own undeserved financial gain.