Two sources whom shall remain anonymous have stated to me, when they contacted IStock to track down, their download history, that not only was IStock fully aware of Joel Albrizio & Adlife Marketing and Communications and their targeting of “infringers”. Not only are they aware, they have also stated that IStock pulled the Adlife Marketing images and account.
I have reached out to the people at IStock to verify this, but have yet to get a response.
Joel Albrizio stated to me in our first somewhat civilized conversation, that Adlife Marketing did at one point work with Getty and Istock, but the HE pulled his account and images. Unfortunately, at this time I tend to believe the letter recipients in that Istock actually pulled his images and his account. So my theory is as follows.
Adlife Marketing decided to create their own Stock Image site, to hawk prepared food images (albeit at an outrageous price of $999.00 per month) while still working with Istock. ( it remains to be seen if there was a contract between IStock and Adlife Marketing.). I think perhaps IStock caught onto this double-dipping of Adlife Marketing, and took action.
At that point someone at Adlife Marketing (probably not Joel Albrizio, I don’t see him being smart enough, but I see him as being greedy enough) came up with the idea of searching and finding anyone who used the purchased images from istock, and pursued them for infringement, knowing full well, that Adlife Marketing would have no records in there brand new database serving up the newly launched Preparedfoods.com website.
What also remains to be seen is if Adlife Marketing / Joel Albrizio knew before-hand that once the images were removed from Istock, that any download history would also disappear within account holders back-end admin area. If this were the case, it’s clear to me that Adlife Marketing and Joel Albrizio knew full and well they could target people with scary demand letters, and that a certain percentage of those victims would pay up.
Coincidentally, Adlife Marketing and Communications still to this day has images for sale on at least two other stock sites. While it’s not uncommon for photographers to sell their work on multiple sites, it is uncommon and a sleezebag tactic to try to target people who have clearly purchased these images.
Again, I reiterate to those who get a nasty-gram from scumbag Joel Albrizio, do your homework, BEFORE PAYING, BEFORE contacting Adlife Marketing, & BEFORE contacting an attorney.