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"Look, if you want to get a Getty image today, you can find it without a watermark very simply," he says. "The way you do that is you go to one of our custo

"Look, if you want to get a Getty image today, you can find it without a watermark very simply," he says. "The way you do that is you go to one of our customer sites and you right-click. Or you go to Google Image search or Bing Image Search and you get it there. And that's what's happening… Our content was everywhere already." When Getty Images gets in the news in Holland it is usually for sending angry letters, demanding up to a 20.000Euro fine for using an image no greater than 150px by 150px on a non-commercial site, no notice. [1]. "And that's what's happening". Yes, and what happens next is that Getty Images places the misleading "royalty free" on their sites and that using an image found on Google Images on a personal blog gets you a letter from one of their lawyer companies. First few years those letters were sent, not over snail mail, not in the Dutch language, but addressed to postmaster@example.com with references to Irish laws that don't apply here, yet with a deadline to pay up. With claims of on average a few hundred Euro's vs damages of max. 20-30 Euros, many suspected that Getty profited heavily from having their pictures "everywhere already", preferably not with the original license intact, adding to the profitable confusion. "Free to use" I don't believe in with this company. It wouldn't surprise me if heavy use of non-watermarked image embedding will lead to more spurious copyright infringement claims [2]. Disclaimer: I received such a letter a few years back when a client provided a thumbnailed image of a pizza they had right-click-saved somewhere. The letter claimed damages for using a full-resolution image with all the publishing rights totaling 750Euro. [1] English source: http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2008/05/watching-getty-images-watching.html http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2008/05/watching-getty-i... [2] About Pic-Scout, their image crawler, not respecting robots.txt and being very difficult to block, search "picscout robots.txt"

leephillips 13y ago
I don't understand your point. Are you saying that people should be able to copy and paste whatever they find and photographers should starve? Seems as if Getty is exploring what could be a fine solution, that I'll probably use.
- err4nt 13y ago
  He's saying Getty in particular has a history and is known for using licence disagreements as a method to generate income. When they come to you saying "you can use these for free now…" he sees them not as extending an olive branch and being nice to people, but rather casting a large, wide net and seeing how many gullible people they can catch and squeeze money out of.
  - blauwbilgorgel 13y ago
    Pretty much. From source [1]: All rights holders are certainly entitled to enforce their legitimate rights in a legitimate way. But they should not be permitted to do so in a manner that is abusive and/or to misuse these rights. >Seems as if Getty is exploring what could be a fine solution, that I'll probably use. I would advise against this solution, over hosting your own images for some of these reasons: - Accessibility issues: embedded images link target _blank to an unrelated page and source shows a lack of an alt-attribute and link description. - Privacy issues: Embedding adds user tracking for Tumblr, Twitter and Getty Images. Unclear what is done with this data and which companies have access to it. - Security issues: Embedding adds a third party website to your site, with all ability to execute code. Do you know for sure that Getty Images will disclose a hack, that their security is up to par with their target size? - SEO issues: Google image results and iframed externally hosted duplicate images without a user-specifiable alt-attribute do not work well together. Furthermore you can't enrich your content with media, which may hamper web search results. - Continuity issues: You won't know how aggressive, or low-quality the future advertisements will be. If your site happens to trigger for a porn related term, you run the risk of them bouncing your referrer (or breaking out of i-frame) for breaking their terms. Will you be notified if they discontinue an embedded image and what will the replacement content look like? How fast could you replace a few months worth of images if you want to switch? - Legal issues: Their terms are clear. You can't use it commercially. So if you ever add advertising to your site or somehow monetize it, you run the risk of skirting the terms of service of a company that is known to aggressively litigate. You put your users at risk of downloading the image, hosting it somewhere, and getting fined, and you yourself probably run an increased risk, increased attention from Getty Images, when you embed their images. I know I would like to know what keywords appear on a page where my images are embedded, I know legal would probably like to add a PicScout scan to that crawler. BTW PicScout is known to report non-public placeholder images stored in hidden dev directories (http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/gettypicscout-some-update/ http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter...)

leephillips 13y ago

I don't understand your point. Are you saying that people should be able to copy and paste whatever they find and photographers should starve? Seems as if Getty is exploring what could be a fine solution, that I'll probably use.

err4nt 13y ago
He's saying Getty in particular has a history and is known for using licence disagreements as a method to generate income. When they come to you saying "you can use these for free now…" he sees them not as extending an olive branch and being nice to people, but rather casting a large, wide net and seeing how many gullible people they can catch and squeeze money out of.
- blauwbilgorgel 13y ago
  Pretty much. From source [1]: All rights holders are certainly entitled to enforce their legitimate rights in a legitimate way. But they should not be permitted to do so in a manner that is abusive and/or to misuse these rights. >Seems as if Getty is exploring what could be a fine solution, that I'll probably use. I would advise against this solution, over hosting your own images for some of these reasons: - Accessibility issues: embedded images link target _blank to an unrelated page and source shows a lack of an alt-attribute and link description. - Privacy issues: Embedding adds user tracking for Tumblr, Twitter and Getty Images. Unclear what is done with this data and which companies have access to it. - Security issues: Embedding adds a third party website to your site, with all ability to execute code. Do you know for sure that Getty Images will disclose a hack, that their security is up to par with their target size? - SEO issues: Google image results and iframed externally hosted duplicate images without a user-specifiable alt-attribute do not work well together. Furthermore you can't enrich your content with media, which may hamper web search results. - Continuity issues: You won't know how aggressive, or low-quality the future advertisements will be. If your site happens to trigger for a porn related term, you run the risk of them bouncing your referrer (or breaking out of i-frame) for breaking their terms. Will you be notified if they discontinue an embedded image and what will the replacement content look like? How fast could you replace a few months worth of images if you want to switch? - Legal issues: Their terms are clear. You can't use it commercially. So if you ever add advertising to your site or somehow monetize it, you run the risk of skirting the terms of service of a company that is known to aggressively litigate. You put your users at risk of downloading the image, hosting it somewhere, and getting fined, and you yourself probably run an increased risk, increased attention from Getty Images, when you embed their images. I know I would like to know what keywords appear on a page where my images are embedded, I know legal would probably like to add a PicScout scan to that crawler. BTW PicScout is known to report non-public placeholder images stored in hidden dev directories (http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/gettypicscout-some-update/ http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter...)