YAY Images Avis 

I recently received a copyright infringement claim from Copytrack on behalf of YaYImages, demanding proof of a licence for an image that I had legally acquired from a different platform. This is nothing more than an automated shakedown, putting the burden on website owners to repeatedly defend their legitimate use of images.

If YaYImages truly cared about fair enforcement, they would verify licensing across platforms before sending out these threatening emails. Instead, they allow Copytrack to bombard businesses with legal-sounding demands, forcing them to waste time proving their innocence or paying extortionate "settlement" fees.

If this is how YaYImages operates, I would strongly advise anyone to avoid their services. A stock image provider should protect its users, not throw them into legal disputes over images they've already licensed elsewhere.

Avoid at all costs!

I filed a complaint with the European Union Consumer Protection Committee.
1. The YAYIMAGES website lacks proper data protection information. The users do not know exactly where the data they provide goes and how it is used, this is illegal. Did it turn out that a Chinese-based company owns the copyright to a problematic photo?

"Despite our best efforts to identify any such content, Doublesix Ltd does not hold any responsibility for any infringements."
Meanwhile, the given photo is actually legally licensed by Shutterstock Inc., where the real author uploaded it!

2. The real owner direct contact information, and the possibility of verification are not listed anywhere on the Yayimages website.

3. EU's General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR): A New Era of Consumer Protection
This is still missing.

4. "You are solely responsible for determining whether your use of any content requires the consent of any third party or the license of any additional rights, and you should not rely solely on the information provided by Doublesix or its members. If you are unsure whether additional third-party rights are needed for your use, you are responsible for consulting with competent rights management professionals or legal counselors."

Am i sure understand this correctly?!?!
The owner does not assume or guarantee the security of the copyrights of the uploaded materials and sells them in this way?
At the same time, in collaboration with another company (Copítrack GmbH), it still attempts to trick users into verifying the appropriate licenses?

I strongly advise against engaging with this organisation. Their practice of instructing legal counsel to demand financial compensation for alleged copyright infringement based solely on automated accusations raises serious concerns.

I, too, utilise legitimate image sources as alternatives to YayImages. However, the current system lacks crucial safeguards. CopyTrack, without conducting any independent verification or demonstrating genuine ownership of the copyrighted material by YayImages, issues threats of legal action and substantial fines. This constitutes an alarming abuse of legal processes.

Furthermore, this is not an isolated incident. This is the second time CopyTrack has made such a demand concerning the same website. YayImages, in their responses on Trustpilot, merely instruct their clients to inform their "partners" of the issue. This places an unreasonable burden on website owners and developers to independently investigate and resolve copyright claims for every image used.

Given the volume of images typically used on websites, complying with this demand would be an impractical and potentially unsustainable undertaking.

After encountering the Copytrack scam (see mine and other reviews) I requested my account with Yay be closed and final balance sent to me. They promised to do this by the end of the month but have failed to do so. (I requested earnings at an earlier date, too, and they refused to send them to me.)

I came across this company after receiving a spam email from Copytrack saying that I "might" be infringing copyright. Well anyone "might" be doing anything, but that's not a reason to send letters demanding money.

YayImages teamed up with Copytrack to send out massive amounts of spam written in language that carefully accuses you of nothing but is designed to sound legal and scare people into paying to "settle" the non-existent case. Of course that is a form of extortion.

I see they are responding to reviews here with something to akin to "if you have a legitimate license you don't need to worry." Well that is something they should be able to check before they send out threatening letters. My time is valuable and I am certainly not going to waste it sending copies of my licenses to people I never heard of. I prefer to spend my time writing a review here and warning others not to fall for this.

Fortunately, if you just ignore these emails they just stop because obviously they have no legal basis and nobody is going to bother paying lawyers to enforce these "rights" when they apparently do not even know themselves who has valid licenses.

Ho ricevuto una violazione di copyright per un'immagine che avevo acquistato con licenza da un altro provider.
Ritengo che il partner a cui si affidino ne mini notevolmente l'affidabilità del servizio.

I got an email from Copytrack threatening me with legal action to pay 750 euros for an image I legitimately downloaded from Canva with a Pro Subscription. How they can even get away with this is beyond me. Yay Images and Copytrack must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for revenue if they resort to these highly unethical practices to make money. Thanks for wasting my time!

Absolute clowns, they teamed up with the scammy Copytrack to try to get me to part with €1000 for an image I downloaded from their own website as part of a subscription I had with them.

What a business model! Harrassing your own customers. Idiots.

Sito che sembra faccia più soldi con richieste (invadenti, psicologicamente terrorizzanti, spammose, ripetitive e moleste) di prove di utilizzo di immagini acquisite da altre fonti (regolari) pur essendo uno dei tanti servizi che concedono diritti di copyright e senza avere un diritto di esclusiva, tale da imporre questo tipo di richieste di prove per mezzo di un servizio di un fantomatico ufficio legale esterno o più o meno direttamente a loro collegato

They are incredibly dodgy. They come after you with copytrack for photos widely available on paid sites. It's an awful way to treat customers as its timely to respond to these.

I had an extremely disappointing experience with YayImages. Their partner, Copytrack, accused me of unauthorized use of an image that is widely available on multiple subscription-based platforms. Instead of a professional inquiry, I was sent a threatening email demanding payment without substantial proof.

As a small personal blog owner earning minimal revenue, I found their approach aggressive and unreasonable. They even requested personal data in a way that raised concerns about GDPR compliance.

I cannot recommend YayImages to anyone, especially if this is how they handle licensing disputes. Instead of resolving issues amicably, they resort to what feels like scare tactics to extract money. Avoid them at all costs!

UPDATE: To reply to Yay Images, your statement is NOT true. The image in question is available at multiple stock image sites not only on Yay Images. In this specific case it was purchased in 2020 from Storyblocks. There is no legitimate claim, you are just throwing mud on the wall and hope it sticks.

It is SCAM! DO NOT PAY THEM! They emailed our business and our clients businesses claiming infringement of copyright images while all images was purchased through Canva. They scamming people to pay them money

NEVER USE YAY IMAGES. As a subscriber of their service, I legitimately download images and use on blogs under their license agreement. I received threatening emails from the bottom-feeding CopyTrack to PROVE that I have the right to use these images. So wait, excuse me. You want me to waste my precious time and resources to prove that I have the right to use an image acquired through my subscription? That burden is unreasonable for an independent publisher. Imagine the time it would require to validate every image used under license for even the smallest of online publishers!

Even though we purchased the photos from Shutterstock, they still send false IP claims. We have submitted our evidence, and Shutterstock knows what they are doing!

Yay Images uses CopyTrack, which supposedly uses "AI” technology to reverse lookup images. Based on these reviews, I don't think it works!

The legal team must be crazy if they think they can mass-send out bogus IP claims without conducting any checks.

UPDATE: 02/01/2025

CopyTrack have now closed the case after I sent over proof from 2016 that we purchased these images.

Also, over the weekend I tracked down the original owners of YAY Images before they sold to these loons! What they told me was really insightful..... Basically don't pay a penny and let them chase! The insider told me that this is what YAY Images does when Shutterstock claims IP on them!

I emailed the owner of CopyTrack (Marcus Schmitt) we had a good back and forth chat... he's now ignoring me!

Claiming we are using an image on one of our websites without permission. They state the image is in use since Jan 2021.

Well, the image was bought in May 2013 at istockphotos.com. Now, can I send you an invoice for the time it took me to recover the evidence?

My advice: don't use them for your images! There are better alternatives such as depositphotos or bigstockphotos!

Looks like YAY Images took photos from Shutterstock to claim they are there's for a bogus email claim. What a bunch of charlatans - might help if they actually checked who owns the rights and didn't pester users that actually have the licence to use the images. Marcus Schmitt - get your facts right (CEO)

Edit part 2: the response from yay images was edited after I updated my review to something no longer automated. Thank you for doing this. The below account of what happened is entirely accurate.

Sent our client a legal threat from Copytrack.
The author of the image has the image legitimately available from other platforms. We got ours from Adobe stock.

We have never heard of YayImages until today and will do everything we can to stop or 200 customers using their services following this legal threat via copytrack.

Do not use YayImages - They think it is acceptable to chase their customers or in this case not their customers and slap a huge legal fee on the process INSTEAD of just asking us to sign up to Yay Images.

The legal compensation fee was almost 4x a yearly membership to yay images and we have never used their services directly and now never will.

One star because of their association with Copytrack who do dirty business for people who have legally purchased images on other platforms.

They claim copyright on images that are available through 20+ other platforms. I never use images without a license, but I would stay away from yay images indefinitely and only buy from platforms that are respectable businesses.

Copytrack will insist on you proving your licence - which is easy to do - but they have absolutely no right to harass people who have purchased their licence legitimately. I have reported them. And I'm not wasting another second of my life on scammers like these.

We bought a tier from Appsumo portal on feb, 2021, and they simply deleted our subcription and we cannot know now many pictures are left.

We´ve downloaded 60 images so far, where 33 were “Extended” and 27 were “Regular”.
I even tried to reach them kindly requesting an understanding what might have happened but they just ignored saying we have a free plan and that is it.
Horrible costumer service. Never more. If I could give a zero star, I would´ve.

Same comment as most others here.
YAY Images took photos from Envato and demanded our company pays a very high compensation for our legally licensed images from Envato. We are contemplating sueing for compensation for wasting our time.

Stay very very far away from Yay Images.