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Getty allowing unlimited free editorial use?!


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(...) your stuff is already free and has been for a while.

 

No it's not! Sure, there are a lot of unauthorized uses, that's not a secret, but there are still many paid ones.

 

This move will eradicate those that still paid for images, while not making anyone of those that didn't pay before, to start doing it now.

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I don't contribute to Getty and am not likely to try if all this is true and correct. Photographers through the decades have aspired to be as good as Getty photographers - truly sad if greed has taken such a formerly great name in imagery to this point.

 

Lets hope and pray that Alamy don't plan the same - unless as has been pointed out the plan is to share fairly with contributors.  I've been around a long time and successfully ran a small business for nearly 20 years. By successful I mean trying to respect customer, supplier, staff and make sure all were fairly treated and rewarded - didn't always get it right - but survived to tell the tale.

 

So what of respect in the image business for us the hard working contributors. I recently had a post deleted because I had (truthfully) pointed out that it had taken 6 months and a string of excuses for 1 small sale to be registered on my account. Is that respect! Numerous chasing emails and stress just to get a tiny share of what I created!

 

Same has happened in many other areas - but some have done something about it - think of fairtrade  - and what they have achieved for small farmers/growers/suppliers - and largely supported by the customer.

 

Alamy had it right in my view when contributors got 60% - that I believe is the least a contributor should get from any agency. Without the product there simply is nothing to sell!

 

So time for a fairtrade of photography - respecting, paying substantially and as promptly as possible each and every small contributor. And yes before anyone asks - it is possible - and yes I am willing to put my energy, time, effort and passion where my mouth is. Not words, some balls, some guts, ACTION.

Is this not what Photographers Direct tried to do? I would love to get involved with something like a true photographers collective. And these days with Amazon cloud product for example (or google / MS / other) it would not be impossible for something like this to work from a technological point of view. It is just marketing  / sales etc that make this a real challenge.

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(...) your stuff is already free and has been for a while.

 

No it's not! Sure, there are a lot of unauthorized uses, that's not a secret, but there are still many paid ones.

 

This move will eradicate those that still paid for images, while not making anyone of those that didn't pay before, to start doing it now.

 

 

100% agree.

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So time for a fairtrade of photography - respecting, paying substantially and as promptly as possible each and every small contributor. And yes before anyone asks - it is possible - and yes I am willing to put my energy, time, effort and passion where my mouth is. Not words, some balls, some guts, ACTION.

Is this not what Photographers Direct tried to do? I would love to get involved with something like a true photographers collective. And these days with Amazon cloud product for example (or google / MS / other) it would not be impossible for something like this to work from a technological point of view. It is just marketing  / sales etc that make this a real challenge.

 

 

Photographers Direct isn't really a true collective. I have thought for a long time that the only future for photographers would be down the 'collective' route and it is probably getting urgent for this to happen. But it would have to be so all encompassing and take masses of photographers away from the current main players for it to work, it certainly wouldn't be so simple to achieve.

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WPL - I am not very technical but sure you are right. True about it being huge challenge - guess thats what make sit exciting possibility. An old cliche I know but everything must start somewhere. In truth with all these kind of issues many will moan and whinge but rare for anybody to actually do anything. History says that those that do often have surprisingly good results. Not sure what happened to Photographers Direct - still running or not - but basic principle was there and with some tweaking (and a good deal of energy and passion!!) could work. I particularly liked the way a potential client could email a photographer and agree a price.

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Callie - largely agree but should not being simple be a reason not to try. Small often works well - back to the fairtrade story - yes huge now but built from the "building blocks" of many many small growers/farmers. BUT respecting them and making sure they all make a at least some kind of living. The idea definitely potentially has legs!

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I found this article giving a personal take about this Getty scheme: http://thedambook.com/getty-did-what

It's an interesting read, but I'm imagining the photos are embedded via this scheme.

If I click on an image, I'm taken to Getty.

If I right click on an image, I can save it out, whereupon I discovered that there is no metadata, no copyright notice, no way of contacting the author or even Getty.

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David W I would be very happy to give it a go and yes I do think it would be worth trying, I have always been a supporter of the Fairtrade model :)

 

I to would agree, now may be the last opportunity to create something akin to "Fairtrade Stock" before all our RM collections are no more then leveraged marketing fodder for the major controlling players in the stock photography business. Its now or never?

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At the time when the stock industry became digital, there was no viable business model established that looked out for the buyers, the sellers and the producers of the product. We, the owners of the images that this business is about have been disregarded. And it gets worse every year. This, of course, is a simplistic thought on what is a complex game. I see no workable solution. 

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Absolutely. Brainstorming around a table - seed planted - tree growing......................

 

Just looked quickly and as far as I can see Photographers Direct is very much alive and well. Hard to tell how much business they do though.

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I to would agree, now may be the last opportunity to create something akin to "Fairtrade Stock" before all our RM collections are no more then leveraged marketing fodder for the major controlling players in the stock photography business. Its now or never?

 

 

I agree, but I could go even further, if at the end Getty model is success, why not replicate the same model but all benefit will go to the photographers, and may be like AdSense sharing with the publishers.

 

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If you think photographers are worried, consider publishers. This skews the economics vastly in favour of digital publishing not print - I can not get unlimited free content of my choice from 35m images to use in print, I depend on the goodwill of photographers to publish portfolios and articles, and if I want anything beyond this I have to pay. For example, I use iStockphoto as an economical means to find occasional pictures to illustrate things like insurance or accounts, and I would use Alamy if the calculator didn't produce an uneconomic figure. If I wanted to use Getty for a small reproduction in a magazine with 1500 copy print run, I'd have to pay - but if I stop publishing on paper, and move over web page/blog, I can use unlimited numbers of images free.

 

So I'm unhappy both ways. I sell my images (often for $10-20 via Alamy) but I can see that disappearing, and I can see that anyone who now concentrates entirely on web delivery of editorial content can fake up an impressive page a day without cost. I remember how crap it was when Practical Photography started using Stone (Getty) images on a contract deal instead of using 'real' photos from readers. They just told their staff to write an article about XX (say, fill-in flash, or wide angle landscapes) and a decent journo can do a 3000-worder in two hours. Then illustrate it with relevant but disconnected images and you have eight pages! Now I could just go into my nearly-defunct blog dPhotoexpert and do a post every day illustrated by Getty images. It would not be my photography or images sourced in the knowledge of how they were made, but who would care? Maybe I'll do it. Up to now, I have had to try to borrow equipment, travel to places to shoot, set up examples. Time rarely permits. I'm sure with 35m images Getty has what I would have spent days producing.

 

There's one purpose, one intention behind this move only and it is not to do with the futile battle against blog image pirates. It's a move to kill Alamy and all other editorial and illusrrative stock competition. And it won't affect Getty high end glitzstock or Getty hot news either, that stuff won't be in this feed.

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I to would agree, now may be the last opportunity to create something akin to "Fairtrade Stock" before all our RM collections are no more then leveraged marketing fodder for the major controlling players in the stock photography business. Its now or never?

 

 

I agree, but I could go even further, if at the end Getty model is success, why not replicate the same model but all benefit will go to the photographers, and may be like AdSense sharing with the publishers.

 

 

And actually cut out the traditional middle-men. But it would require a competent service provider as it is not a trivial undertaking to store and serve up millions of images/ads quickly; perhaps somebody like PhotoShelter, SmugMug or even a start-up? Google even, after all they do have the knowledge (Adsense) and infrastructure?

 

It would be a very interesting addition to Adsense; if it was as easy as that perhaps even routed from our own online libraries it could be very liberating.

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...

 

There's one purpose, one intention behind this move only and it is not to do with the futile battle against blog image pirates. It's a move to kill Alamy and all other editorial and illusrrative stock competition. And it won't affect Getty high end glitzstock or Getty hot news either, that stuff won't be in this feed.

 

It must be time for anti-trust/ competition investigations in USA and EU? Who can make the complaint to trigger action?

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Absolutely. Brainstorming around a table - seed planted - tree growing......................

 

Just looked quickly and as far as I can see Photographers Direct is very much alive and well. Hard to tell how much business they do though.

Photographers Direct certainly is alive, in fact I just had the first enquiry through them in a long time. I still wish they would do a total website re-design though, it is badly needed. 

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The one issue as I see from a reader's point of view. If I am reading an online mag or paper and I want to go to the story that the photo is illustrating, I always click on the photo, not the headline. This is especially true on tablets or phones as its easier to be sure to hit the photo with your finger instead of the headline. But now the photo will take me away from the paper/mag and to getty. Some papers will not want their readers redirected away from their website. An assumption made by all is that the photos always link to the article, same as on my website all the photos link to the items for sale. 

 

Once I do get to the actual article, why would I even click on the photo? The only time I would click on the photo is to take me to the article. After that, there is no reason to be interested in the photo except as illustrating the article.

 

As a reader I would be getting really ticked that if every time I clicked on the photo, it took me away from where I wanted to be.

 

Jill

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And actually cut out the traditional middle-men. But it would require a competent service provider as it is not a trivial undertaking to store and serve up millions of images/ads quickly; perhaps somebody like PhotoShelter, SmugMug or even a start-up? Google even, after all they do have the knowledge (Adsense) and infrastructure?

 

It would be a very interesting addition to Adsense; if it was as easy as that perhaps even routed from our own online libraries it could be very liberating.

It is true that is a very complex issue to set up all this, but we have the content, our content, and we at the end we could negotiate with companies that can do the rest.

Maybe in the near future there will be a site that you upload your photos and they monitorised by giving you a percentage of the advertisement that generate your image in other sites. If your image is very good will be displayed in thousands of sites and that is at the end money.

 

Maybe is a pure envy, but I am fed up of companies, like Facebook, Flicker, Panoramio, etc. (well maybe they are better examples) thae that are bigger, and richer, thanks to PEOPLE content not giving even a cent back. We do the hard work and they just get the cash, just because had a great idea and create a good software to implement it.

 

“La tierra para quien la trabaja”

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And actually cut out the traditional middle-men. But it would require a competent service provider as it is not a trivial undertaking to store and serve up millions of images/ads quickly; perhaps somebody like PhotoShelter, SmugMug or even a start-up? Google even, after all they do have the knowledge (Adsense) and infrastructure?

 

It would be a very interesting addition to Adsense; if it was as easy as that perhaps even routed from our own online libraries it could be very liberating.

It is true that is a very complex issue to set up all this, but we have the content, our content, and we at the end we could negotiate with companies that can do the rest.

Maybe in the near future there will be a site that you upload your photos and they monitorised by giving you a percentage of the advertisement that generate your image in other sites. If your image is very good will be displayed in thousands of sites and that is at the end money.

 

Maybe is a pure envy, but I am fed up of companies, like Facebook, Flicker, Panoramio, etc. that are bigger, and richer, thanks to PEOPLE content not giving even a cent back. We do the hard work and they just get the cash, just because had a great idea and create a good software to implement it.

 

“La tierra para quien la trabaja”

 

 

 

We may have the content but photographers (and writers, artists, musicians, ...) have done an abysmal job of negotiating with companies to do the rest. If, as a body, we had been half competent in negotiating in the past we would not be having this discussion.

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The music library scene ( I suppose you might call it the equivalent of stock photography) is better run than the photography library scene it seems to me.  You don't get paid $7 afaik very often with a  music placement. The PRS is regarded as a very good hub in the UK for musicians all over the world. The difference between photography and music placements is you don't get much in the way of royalties in photography. I just don't think looking at the way stock photography has gone it remains that viable for the individual. The stock companies seemingly don't seem too worried by that and the whole issue is a numbers game, hence the sudden involvement in iPhone etc. There will be quite a number of stock photographers that would disagree I'm sure, but with large portfolios of 15K to 20K plus and the advent of again, 10 year old kids with an iPhone, the only logical conclusion I can see is that their days are numbered, especially in the amount per image stakes. 

This sounds like doom, but it's the only outcome on an objective basis I can see.

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