
It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers - seventyhorses
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/its-crunchtime-for-seattle-based-photo-giant-getty-images-and-for-photographers/
======
RobertRoberts
Getty is the epitome of the evil corporation. They threatened a number of my
customers (who all won against Getty via lawyers) for putting photos on their
sites with dubious ownership rights.

I have experience with copyright law (unpleasantly) and there is a process
required by the law to actually win a settlement on copyright infringement,
and Getty uses thug tactics and threats to get small parties to pay up.

Their empire deserves to crumble.

[https://www.extortionletterinfo.com/](https://www.extortionletterinfo.com/)

~~~
tomxor
Yeah, looks like the majority of their revenue is literally based on
entrapment:

> Just over half of Getty’s revenues, according to industry estimates, come
> from distributing “stock” photos — images of generic subjects, such as
> “house” or “orange juice” or “corporate executive,” that a commercial client
> might use in brochures, websites or advertisements.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
They have some bots crawling around the web and sending out automated letters
then to people who they think need to license their photos. I fucked around
with the bit and wasted its energy since it came to my territory, at least 4
years ago it wasn't very smart. I just told them point blank to fuck off,
probably they go only after American customers since they are in the
legislation area to threaten.

~~~
iudqnolq
So you stole someone else's property and told them to fuck off? And you expect
praise for this? Even if you hate Getty, they're a platform that resells
images individual photographers take.

------
lsd3
I used to earn over 100 usd per photo sale on 500px. Since they started
licensing through Getty I get pennies. Litterally. Just a few days ago one of
my photos got licensed where I received less than 1 usd in fees. I went to
check on Getty's website and saw the cheapest you could license it from there
was 50 usd. Talk about greed and getting screwed. I'm removing all my photos
from 500px within a month.

~~~
gnicholas
How much do you get when it's licensed on Getty for $50? It's an apples-and-
oranges comparison to talk about your cut from 500px and the gross fee on
Getty. I'm sure your cut on Getty is bigger, but I'm curious to know if it's
10x bigger or 50x bigger.

~~~
anigbrowl
_I received less than 1 usd in fees_

~~~
joking
I don't want to defend getty, ¿but are not most of the images licensed via
subscription instead of one by one? For example, you can get access to getty
images inside canva, I don't think they can paid 50$ per image when they sell
a 10$ month subscription.

------
x__x
Surprised there was no mention of the upcoming threat of AI stock photos, and
how easy it will be to generate massive amounts of these fast and cheap. Ne
real people, who won't have to sign contracts or be paid.

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875362/100000-fake-
ai-p...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875362/100000-fake-ai-photos-
stock-photography-royalty-free)

~~~
masona
Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food
image. It's super hard!

Just the rights management issue of the training set is a tough question. Then
you have to account for quality, direction and dimensionality of light, food
styling, props, custom products or ingredients, the list of challenges goes on
an on.

Then after the image is produced, if you're a food company, all your imagery
is a kind of 'claim-based' imagery meaning consumers assume it is real and in
some cases, there are laws preventing the use of fake foods in ads.

I'm curious about the implications of a world where AI stock photos are
ubiquitous, but some styles of imagery are pretty far out at the moment.

Source: Spent 15 years in the commercial photo industry.

~~~
mkirch
I do wonder if the rights management issue is impacted by the decision
referenced in this article regarding training machine learning models on
copyrighted material:

[https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-
co...](https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-court-
decision-for-data-science-and-machine-learning-44cfc1c1bcaf)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc).

~~~
bcrosby95
It seems like part of that case hinged on economic impact. If you're using
copyrighted books and show snippets of the book that's one thing. But using
copyrighted material to build something that is attempting to replace the
copyrighted material seems like it could have gone the other way.

------
dessant
> Getty has been criticized for selling the rights to photos that are freely
> available in the public domain.

Searching for images on the web can sometimes mitigate this issue. Search by
Image (maintainer here) can help you to quickly find alternative sources for
images. It also supports several stock photo sites, so price comparison
becomes easier. Visit the extension's options to enable the search engines you
need.

[https://github.com/dessant/search-by-
image](https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image)

~~~
rozab
Does this give significantly better results than just Google and TinEye? They
often fail me.

~~~
dessant
I believe Yandex has the best reverse image search engine on the web today,
Google's image results have considerably deteriorated in the past few years.
Though if you're looking to compare stock photo prices, the engines of stock
photo sites can also reliably find images.

~~~
dannyw
Nice, thanks for that. Have definitely noticed Google Reverse Image Search
oddly regressing but I'll try out Yandex.

------
kachurovskiy
Registered on Shutterstock 11 months ago, added 9 photos, sold 3 for a grand
total of $0.75.

Selling stock photos made sense for photographers 10-20 years ago, not worth
it anymore unless you're at the very top.

For the reference:
[https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MateoSan](https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MateoSan)

~~~
blhack
The reason people didn't buy these is because there isn't enough continuous
color anywhere to put text on top of.

~~~
cm2012
Yep, I download probably 25 images a month on Shutterstock to make ads with,
and I need continuous color to out text on.

~~~
greggman2
dumb question. Do any of the services let you filter for continuous color?

~~~
cm2012
Don't think so

------
masona
Another major shift that the article neglects to mention is global arbitrage.
The advancement of camera + software quality and accessibility means people
can make great pictures anywhere.

These days there are a lot of studios in the stock houses like Getty and
Shutterstock that are based in Eastern Europe, or Asia, where the small
amounts of money from stock images can really add up over time.

Copying styles, compositions and concepts of historically successful stock
images means these producers make out quite well for their regional market by
selling to more expensive markets.

Photo prices are going down for American photographers but it's still good
money for smaller economies.

~~~
iudqnolq
Picking on you a little, but I see lots of comments like this one on HN:
Unsourced, industry inside knowledge, stated authoritatively, confirms my
biases and fits into a narrative well known amoung the kinds of people who
read HN.

I'm not really sure what the solution is. Thoughts?

~~~
tehwebguy
I’m not sure people need to use a citation when effectively just saying
“opening a market up to the world drives prices down”

~~~
iudqnolq
Exactly. It's not making a controversial claim. But it is telling a specific
story. And it's interesting because of that. If the comment was what you'd
written to summarize it I wouldn't have payed it much attention.

Also, it's selection bias if "obviously sensical" anecdotes are believed and
ones that disagree with our preconceptions aren't.

------
lawrenceyan
Companies like pinterest, getty, and yelp are genuinely the worst. They're
like leeches, and I hate how they constantly show up on my google searches.

~~~
jrobn
I think the world is heading for, if not an ecological apocalypse, but a
technology one too. Technology is far out pacing our understand of its impact
on human development and society. We are screwed.

------
willyg123
There is a startup yet to be founded to sell inexpensive, high-quality
original photos for exclusive use.

Unique photos, i.e. photos not considered "duplicate content", are critical if
you want to rank organically on Google [0]

Getty will eventually be disrupted.

[0] [https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-duplicate-
image-...](https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-duplicate-image-
experiment/)

~~~
3pt14159
A long time ago I was Chief Data Scientist at 500px following the acquisition
of a company I cofounded and this was exactly what I was advocating for.
Professional photographers are cash poor, but with the right interface and
contracts we could have done it. I wasn't able to get the CEO to see things my
way and other problems with the company led to my departure, but I still think
this is a viable business. The key here is what is meant by "inexpensive"
because $500 is inexpensive to BMW but expensive to a startup.

~~~
Sendotsh
I've sold photos on and off for 20 years (on a direct basis, companies contact
me via my portfolio), and I've generally gone for a rough "$5 per employee
that the company has" rate. A 10 person startup wants one of my photos? I'm
happy to give it to them for $50. 200 person company with a marketing employee
calling me? $1000 sounds about right. Microsoft wants exclusive use of a
photo? $700k will do just nicely thanks ;)

You can't always accurately assess this of course, so it's mostly done by gut
feel after learning a bit about the company, but it's done me well so far and
I've never had a company turn down my price, nor have I ever felt like I've
been taken advantage of.

------
revicon
There are so many free stock photo sites out there these days that I can't
understand why anyone would be hitting Getty up for anything. The quality
across the free sites can vary but some are incredibly good. I made a list of
about 50 a year ago, there's probably twice that number now.

[https://www.mattcrampton.com/blog/mega_list_of_free_image_si...](https://www.mattcrampton.com/blog/mega_list_of_free_image_sites_for_blogging/)

~~~
anigbrowl
Amateurs are happy to have 50 great sites to find things on. Most working
professionals on a deadline don't have the time. You're not wrong, it's just
that in the ad/publishing industry the editors time is probably worth more
than the cost of licensing the photo.

------
bigbaguette
A couple points to balance the opinions seen in the comments:

-While the photographic offer grew a lot over the past decades, demand spiked as well. Ask yourself: how many pictures have you seen since you got up this morning? We're surrounded by screens.

-It's not the camera that makes a great picture. However advanced and accessible the hardware gets, there's still a need for the creative minds operating it to produce quality content.

For sure, owning good equipment is not enough anymore to make a living out of
it, which was the case in the past, especially for local, family
photographers. These needs are now fulfilled by the technology in our pockets.

The scene is now worldwide. There's a profusion of imagery everywhere. To
stand out of the noise, one needs to specialize and up the ante.

Getty and other stock providers make the growing demand and offer meet,
dragging down the value of "common" photography (through dubious ways
sometimes). There's still plenty of space for high quality production, and
it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

------
elviejo
Stocksy United is a photographers cooperative.

A much more worthy company to support.

No affiliation, just a fan of cooperatives and high quality photos.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocksy_United](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocksy_United)

[https://www.stocksy.com/](https://www.stocksy.com/)

------
12xo
The internet commoditizes everything it touches. Its a race to the bottom
regardless of the product or service...in the end everything ends up as a
commodity.

------
EdwardDiego
I still don't understand how making a purchased company responsible for the
debt of its own purchase is legal:

> Getty’s private-equity owners had financed the purchase of Getty with
> massive debt — $2.6 billion in the case of Carlyle — which became Getty’s
> debt.

~~~
smabie
Can you point to a law that makes it illegal?

~~~
EdwardDiego
No, which is why I raised the question - why isn't it illegal? Given the acts
with a social cost that soon follow to "pay" for the company's acquisition?
Redundancies etc.

~~~
smabie
It isn’t illegal because no one made it illegal, it’s pretty obvious no? But
being a little less flippant, I can’t see any reason why it should be illegal.
If I buy a company I should be able to do whatever I want with it. If
shareholders didn’t have the power to make choices about the company they own,
the very fabric of capitalism would be undermined.

~~~
anigbrowl
Speed the day on that. This is exactly the sort of thing that's wrong with
capitalism.

------
pippy
I'm still annoyed that Google bowed down to them in their litigation
settlement. Getty wanted have their cake and eat it too, by having Google
surface the images, but not really surface the images. Google should have
treated it like any other DMCA copyright infringement case and removed Getty
images from their index. It would have allowed Google users to use more free
images, and Getty would have no copyright claim.

Instead Google removed their direct image button, frustrating all users of
their platform.

~~~
Gigablah
Remove Getty Images and you’d have all sorts of comments about antitrust.

------
greendestiny_re
I don't understand why photographers don't sell their _services_ as opposed to
single photos for a few cents each. I've written plenty of articles for a
popular website (now defunct) where I looked through Google Images for hours
to find an "appropriate, interesting and HD image" (exact job requirements).

~~~
liability
How long would it take for you to find a photographer, explain what you're
looking for, negotiate a price and then finally receive the photographs you
wanted? Probably more than a few hours.

This is where Getty adds value IMHO. Their site is a quick way to find extant
photographs that fit most needs. (For this, I think their search is better
than Google's.)

------
nobrains
It's a-typical. Make prices lower for customers, resulting in same or more
revenue for the middle man (Getty, et al.) while screwing the producers.

Eventually, good photographers will leave.

Getty should be compensating lower prices by taking lesser share from the
producers.

------
brenden2
Unsplash is a great alternative.

~~~
x__x
I've been using [https://pixabay.com/](https://pixabay.com/) for website stuff

------
zozbot234
The article says that Getty is still deriving most of their revenue from
generic stock photos? That was quite surprising to me, since Wikimedia Commons
among other sites provides plenty of such images under "free content" licenses
(including images in the public domain). Perhaps the typical downstream reuser
is unwilling to resort to these for some reason?

~~~
steve19
Stock imagery is an art in its own right. Every newbie photographer thinks
they can do stock images, but they can't.

Knowing what people want is key, along with the ability to perfectly execute
it. For example "woman in blue dress sitting under fall tree looking at moon"
might convey some of of commercial message that is used to sell everything
from ebook readers to insurance and nets the photographer a fortune in
licensing or royalties, but on the the other hand maybe nobody is interested
in it, and if you cannot execute it perfectly, nobody will accept it into
their catalog.

Why this Hanukkah photo is better than others, I don't know, but Shutterstock
is featuring it right now so I guess it sells well and the colors and tones
capture a popular trend:

[https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/jewish-holiday-
hanu...](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/jewish-holiday-hanukkah-
background-menorah-gift-744933391)

~~~
Majromax
> Why this Hanukkah photo is better than others, I don't know, but
> Shutterstock is featuring it right now so I guess it sells well and the
> colors and tones capture a popular trend:

It perfectly captures an advertisement aesthetic.

When I visited your link, I spent several seconds thinking the page hadn't
loaded properly. I could see the caption, but not the image.

Then I realized that the image was in fact there, but my eyes were skipping
over it in the exact same way I ignore banner ads.

------
buboard
Photographers should be already looking for another job or try some warzones.
Cant beat the variety of AI models and photos.

Also, i think the article is wrong, stock sites have become ridiculously
expensive, with shady subscriptions and daily limits and all. Sorry guys, it s
a new century. Few people need print-resolution photos anymore

------
pupppet
I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res
photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows
how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way.

I get there's hardware/time involved in setting up a single photo, but hell,
not that much.

~~~
nordsieck
> I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-
> res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god
> knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Honestly, that doesn't bother me that much.

What's truly absurd is wedding photography. Photographers get paid $1000+ and
keep the copyright. Almost every other work-for-hire intellectual job involves
an IP transfer.

~~~
9935c101ab17a66
It seems that wedding photographers keep the copyright so that they can
reproduce them for self-promotion and advertising, which totally makes sense.

Also, if you think the cost is unreasonable, I completely disagree.
Photography is a very expensive vocation, and the wedding season is very
short. There is little room for error, and the photos have an enormous
emotional significance. The event day (or days) is incredibly long, and
cataloging and processing images can be an enormous time suck afterward. I get
that some people may not be interested in wedding photos, but that doesn't
mean the photographers are overpriced for the work they do.

~~~
jcl
> It seems that wedding photographers keep the copyright so that they can
> reproduce them for self-promotion and advertising

That's probably not the main reason, since many other artists are able to use
their work-for-hire in self promotion. All they'd need is an appropriate usage
license, not copyright ownership.

More likely, when wedding photographers try to keep the copyright, they are
hoping to charge separately for additional prints or DVDs, control which print
shop reproduces their work, enforce the presence of their watermarks, or
relicense the images as stock photography. These are all additional revenue
and advertising streams that would not be available if the customer held the
copyright.

