back to article Getty offers 35 MILLION images for free – if you jump (em)bed with it

Photo giant Getty Images has announced it will allow 35 million of its images to be embedded on non-commercial sites such as blogs, message boards and social networks. It's via a new Embed tool, similar to Twitter or YouTube's iframe HTML, which allows the image to be pasted onto a web page, and allows Getty to track usage. …

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  1. Graham 24
    WTF?

    You don't get nuffin' fer nuffin' dese days...

    From the Terms of Use:

    Not all Getty Images Content will be available for embedded use, and availability may change without notice. Getty Images reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove Getty Images Content from the Embedded Viewer.

    and

    Getty Images (or third parties acting on its behalf) may collect data related to use of the Embedded Viewer and embedded Getty Images Content, and reserves the right to place advertisements in the Embedded Viewer or otherwise monetise its use without any compensation to you.

    Oh good. The image on my web site might just go away one day, but if they stay, might have adverts plastered all over them.

    1. BillG
      Devil

      Re: You don't get nuffin' fer nuffin' dese days...

      From the Terms of Use:

      Not all Getty Images Content will be available for embedded use, and availability may change without notice and when it does, we will send you a blackmail notice in the mail demanding cash...

      1. veti Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: You don't get nuffin' fer nuffin' dese days...

        A 'blackmail notice' that you would consider paying - because why exactly?

        You don't like what the embedded link is serving, take it off your damn' page. Nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to use Getty's image. If you decide to do it, you do it on their terms - and if you don't like the free terms, I presume there's still an option to pay.

        1. BillG
          Mushroom

          Re: You don't get nuffin' fer nuffin' dese days...

          A 'blackmail notice' that you would consider paying - because why exactly?

          The blackmail is that, if you don't pay up, they crap all over your credit rating. They do it by exploiting a loophole in the credit reporting systems in the US and UK in that if you have access to modify credit scores, you don't need to prove a business relationship to damage someone's credit rating!

  2. dervheid
    Meh

    not

    exactly 'freely' at all really, is it.

  3. BillG
    Pirate

    Getty = Blackmailers

    You couldn't pay me to use a Getty image on my websites.

  4. Anonymous IV

    Terms & Conditions

    The Terms & Conditions are a snappy just-less-than-4000 words.

    I need to install additional Will-To-Live just to read them.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anything to kill shutterstock I guess

    If we cannot compete with shutterstock on merit, we shall destroy them by price dumping.

    Nice...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    http://sxc.hu

  7. Pypes

    Global Licensing?

    The British courts seem to have taken the rather unique view that a photographic reproduction of a public domain work, even if it should by all accounts constitute a "slavish technical reproduction" confers the status of derivative work on the new image, with full blown copyright protection. This is essentially the reason why you don't see high resolution digital copies of paintings held by British museums.

    Wikipedia /media decided that this was a non-issue for them as consider themselves subject to US rather than UK law, but seeing as we live in a nation that will happily extradite people for posting hyperlinks (to the US no less) I can see some naive bloggers finding themselves on the wrong side of the bench in the civil courts.

    1. halftone

      Re: Global Licensing?

      Not really. You're getting mixed up, wrong Boogeyman. The reason digitised PD artworks from British museums are 'copyright' is that the museums did very lucrative deals with Corbis back in the late 1990's. The museums gained cash, Corbis gained the exclusive right to digitise and license. This was certainly invidious behaviour on the part of the museums and galleries, considering that most of the art had either been purchased with taxpayers money, or donated or bequeathed to the public. But our cultural institutions have long been schizoid, part philanthropy, part money-grubbing gravy train.

      Having done the work to digitise, Corbis naturally assert copyright of their digitised versions. It is questionable whether that is valid because there is no copyright in mechanical copies, although there is a counter-argument that accurate copies of paintings require a great deal of skill and judgement (they do - it's not like photocopying). However nobody has dared challenge the validity as far as I know, because in general it is cheaper to pay Corbis repro fees than pick a fight with an organisation whose lawyers have access to Mr Gates significantly large wallet.

  8. The Dark Lord

    Consumer/producer confused

    As an amateur/hobbyist photographer, I would like to take advantage of some sort of microstock-like arrangement. I guess I have dreams of some day monetising this hobby to the extent that I can exit the day job. But it doesn't seem as if the content producers have any control over whether their images are "freely available" or not. And the discretion to add/remove images from the free bucket seems to be entirely in Getty's court. So does that mean the photographer cedes all rights to the image, gets it distributed, whereupon Getty thinks "Ooh, we can make some cash off this", raking it all in for themselves, with the 'tog getting nothing? I rather suspect so.

    And as someone who runs a couple of blogs, I know how much a carefully curated image adds to the post. To date I've been making use of Creative Commons licensed work, but it would be good to have a ready-curated library of suitable works available. But then, what if Getty thinks "Ooh, we can make some cash off this", sending me a bill for using the image that had been free?

    So, I may be doing Getty a disservice here, but it seems like they've dressed up a massive land-grab of licensing control as an apparently benevolent offer of making quality images available for authorised use without charge.

    As a producer and user of photography, I'm out.

  9. No Quarter

    Since Getty are right up there in popularity stakes with Robert Mugabe, Max Clifford and Gordon Brown, I think the last thing you want to do with a web site is embed a few thousand pixels of their evil internet real estate, complete with adverts and link back to yet more evil.

  10. Ian 55

    How long before the embed code is added to adblock lists?

    Immediately, or as soon as they use it to show any ads on anything anywhere?

  11. Pete ThSplendiferous

    Worst headline this decade.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So they can withdraw library images or plaster them with ads?

    Not comforting. But right now the situation is untenable. i.e. Hiring shady law firms that utilize bully-boy tactics patent trolls would be proud of:

    "Controversial practices to enforce copyright

    Beginning in 2008, Getty Images has created controversy in its manner of pursuing copyright enforcement on behalf of its photographers. Rather than pursue a policy of sending out "cease and desist" notices, Getty typically mails out a demand letter claiming substantial sums of damages to owners of websites which it believes have used their images in infringement of their photographers' copyright. Getty commonly tries to intimidate website owners by sending collection agents, even though a demand letter cannot create a debt."

    1. halftone

      Re: So they can withdraw library images or plaster them with ads?

      Ah, the pitiable whingeing of freetard entitlement, never a thought for the victim.

      Much as I loathe and detest Getty, sending out those scary letters was probably the best - in fact the only constructive - thing they have done.

      As a pro photographer I am sick to death of my photos being stolen and used in ways I would never permit at any price. I had put hundreds of pictures online for people to look at and hopefully enjoy, and from 1996 until a few years ago people understood what was fair and what was not. Now I can't do that any more. In 2012 I did a sample audit and found infringing uses outnumbered legit 14:1; all had metadata stripped, almost none linked back to me, a majority claimed to be copyright of the thieves.

      Naturally, like any shop in a neighbourhood of looters, this is untenable. I've taken the internet's advice that 'if you don't want it stolen, don't put it on the internet'. Of course this is elective suicide, but you leave me no alternative.

      According to you, I am supposed to spend the next several unpaid man-years sending out 7,000 DMCA take-down notices. Frankly I'd have preferred that Getty send the boys round with a nailgun. However this is now academic: this embed wheeze is a play to become the Google of image libraries and Getty are back on form as a fat destructive parasite. It's another nail in the coffin for professional creators, another neoliberal triumph of siphoning wealth uphill c/o the seductive fib of 'free', when every penny of ad revenue is a tax on goods and services that nobody can escape. It's just an illusion that some other mug will pay. Wake the fuck up, internet. You get what you pay for, and handing control to advertisers, axegrinders and corporations is not freedom of any sort.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "Martin Orpen, co-founder of the UK photographers self-help group Pro Imaging..."

    Which presumably uses only... orpen-source software solutions...

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