If you do an internet search for images of Trolls, you are likely to find small, colorful creatures with wild hair, big toothy grins, and retrousse noses with large, wide nostrils.
On the other hand, if one does a search for trolls on the Lexology database (which is very good indeed) there's not a lot of snot and drool, and not a great variety. A few legal bloggers have in depth expertise with copyright trolls and patent trolls.
Tongue-in-cheek is usually an adjective, it can be a noun used adjectivally, or it can be a noun as an idiom (tongue in cheek). An idiom is a group of words which are used in a set order, and which are understood to mean something other than the meaning of each component word used on its own.
On the other hand, when you combine that particular idiom with a troll, something disgusting comes to mind... at least for me.
For the benefit of the humorless or the dense (my words), Darrin Klemchuk wrote two, more serious articles spelling out the steps -seven of them- that a website owner or blogger should take to mitigate the damage after they receive what appears to be extortion attempts by apparent copyright trolls over the use of photographs.
https://www.klemchuk.com/ideate/in-house-counsel-solutions-series-4q-2023
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=95729806-4e28-44f1-91f4-3c78662f3eac
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f805d616-7cda-4a91-96bb-48c014b69563
The very valuable, and sometimes daunting advice of Darrin Klemchuk focuses on once the milk has been spilled and the horse is out of the proverbial barn. The unhappy defendant has made use of a photograph which they downloaded from the internet.
Possibly, if one absolutely must snag an image from the internet, one could extrapolate from Darrin's advice some precautions to take. Take a screenshot of the image in its context to show if it has any copyright-ownership information; which site it is on (for instance, a notorious pirate site, or a respectable site); whether there are any Terms of Use or Terms of Service posted on the site or page that might lead you to believe that the image was free to use; whether you paid for use of the image and if so, whom you paid and how much.
Another step you might take, after snagging the image but before exploiting it, would be to use Google's excellent search-by-image feature to see where else the image appears. A copyright owner might have sued someone else over it, or the image might appear elsewhere on the web with copyright wording that might be missing on the copy that tempted you.
Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Jodi L. Miller writing for the New Jersey State Bar Foundation explains the ancient and almost global concept that "But I didn't know..." is not a legally persuasive defense.
https://njsbf.org/2018/04/23/ignorance-of-the-law-is-not-an-excuse/
It should be said, not every copyright owner who tries to protect their photographs or other intellectual property is automatically a "troll".
Darrin Klemchuk offers this caveat, and it is a good one.
"By “copyright troll,” I am referring to a specific kind of plaintiff claiming ownership in a copyright with the intent to monetize it by cease-and-desist campaigns after the photograph becomes “available” on the Internet. Over the years, I have become suspicious that some of these plaintiffs purposely position images to be copied by naïve Internet users and use electronic files that can be detected by Internet crawlers to find potential infringers, then send demand letters seeking excessive payments."
In 2018, legal blogger Brittany Frandsen of the law firm Workman Nydegger defined copyright trolls thus:
"A copyright troll owns a copyright, typically in a feature film or pornographic video, and attempts to enforce its copyright against individuals who download unauthorized copies of the copyrighted material using file-sharing software such as BitTorrent."Visit her article for a clear explanation of how copyright trolls operated on BitTorrent, with the ability to target hundreds or thousands of copright infringers at once (because every pirated movie was shared in hundreds or thousands of fractions).
https://www.wnlaw.com/blog/copyright-trolls-new-face-copyright-litigation/#page=1
The troll business model was quite fiendish. Most illegal-file-sharers would pay the troll rather than face the embarrassment of defending themselves in open court over stealing porn, and risking a verdict against them of $150,000 in statutory damages.
Brittany Frandsen tells the tale of one accused "troll" who was said to have made six million dollars between 2011 and 2014. On the other hand, she points out that the type of troll action that she describes relies on the association of IP addresses with a pirated work. Yet, IP addresses are not reliable because routers can be hacked, and IP addresses can be spoofed.
At this point, the best advice is Benjamin Franklin's, "When in doubt, don't"All the best,
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