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Businesses The Media News

Getty Images Makes 35 Million Images Free For Non-Commercial Use 66

Posted by timothy from the can't-beat-'em dept.
kc123 writes "In an effort to deal with copyright infringement Getty Images is launching a new embedding feature that will make more than 35 million images freely available to anyone for non-commercial usage. Anyone will be able to visit Getty Images' library of content, select an image and copy an embed HTML code to use that image on their own websites. Getty Images will serve the image in an embedded player – very much like YouTube currently does with its videos – which will include the full copyright information and a link back to the image's dedicated licensing page on the Getty Images website."
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Getty Images Makes 35 Million Images Free For Non-Commercial Use More

Getty Images Makes 35 Million Images Free For Non-Commercial Use

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  • Embedded player (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Optimal Cynic ( 2886377 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:03PM (#46420899)

    Getty Images will serve the image in an embedded player

    Yuck...

  • Creative Commons exists for this kind of thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nurhussein ( 864532 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:06PM (#46420951) Homepage
    Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivitives will do the trick. I question the need for heavy-handed control mechanisms such as embedded players. I suppose they want to guarantee attribution and a link back to them, but people who are intent to steal their images are going to do it anyway.

    • Re:Creative Commons exists for this kind of thing (Score:5, Funny)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:47PM (#46421343) Journal
      but people who are intent to steal their images are going to do it anyway.

      Except it's not stealing, is it? Nothing is being taken. The people are just using the image for their own purpose with the idea being the image is still attributed to Getty, the distributor, and the photographer, who doesn't get paid for the use of their work.

      Obviously at some point the person would return the image since they're just borrowing it, not stealing it. That's what happens when someone "shares" their music with someone else, right? They let the other person borrow the music and when done, the person returns the music back to the person who bought the cd/album/mp3/whatever, not keeping a copy for themselves.

      • Thanks for being the first person on Slashdot to eloquently explain the difference between theft and copyright. :/

        • And thank you for missing the sarcasm in my post.

          Because when you "share" music you've purchased, the person to whom you've "shared" returns the music to you, and doesn't keep a copy for themselves, right?

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by mythosaz ( 572040 )

            This is Slashdot. I'm going to need a car analogy if you want me to understand these things...

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Because when you "share" music you've purchased, the person to whom you've "shared" returns the music to you, and doesn't keep a copy for themselves, right?

            Just like how when I "share" my food, the person to whom I've "shared" returns the food pre- or post-digestion. Or how when I "share" my seat, the person to whom I've "shared" returns the favor perhaps or literally cuts away at the seat to physically give the seat back to me even when I didn't per se ever own it. I mean, gosh, it's almost as if to shar

  • But what good is it, really... (Score:3)

    by RandomUsername99 ( 574692 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:12PM (#46420991)

    But what good is it, really, without the built-in ability superimpose moronic LOLcats style text on them.

  • Photographers? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mrs. Grundy ( 680212 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:14PM (#46421011) Homepage

    This looks like a trojan horse to allow Getty to gain a wide foothold around the web in a way they can control. There is nothing to stop them — in fact it's in their TOS — from adding ads to the iframe at some point. They will then be in a position of monetizing their images in a different way than licensing them, which mean they probably will not need to share revenue with the photographers.

    Getty is currently owned by the Carlyle Group, which makes me wonder if this is part of a grand strategy to break the company up into sellable pieces. Having a segment with a internet-friendly, sharing, youtube-esque, business model and no existing liability to contributors is probably pretty attractive to them.

    But my guess—nobody wants their nasty embedded frame on their site and this will be a dud.

    • Getty's new free editorial use policy is unfair to photographers. Writer? Paid. Editor? Paid. IT staff? Paid. Photog? Sucks to be you.

      • You think the writers and IT staff are pad. That's funny.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suutar ( 1860506 )
        Eh. Getty probably still pays the photographer. They make it back on (hopefully) licensing fees from folks who see the pictures and want to do more with them and (more likely) ads.

    • “We reserve the right to monetise that footprint,” Peters explains. “YouTube implemented a very similar capability, which allows people to embed videos on a website, with the company generating revenue by serving advertising on that video.” And while Getty Images has yet to determine how these ads will appear, Peters is confident that this capability will be introduced in the near future.

      TFA actually states that they plan on adding advertising soon, although they don't mention how these ads will be displayed in their "embedded player". I have no idea how they plan on advertising without being incredibly intrusive; I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

  • Once a hacker gets control of it they can have the embedded players show anything they want much more easily than before. They could possibly even have the player show video. Sounds like a very juicy target.

  • Why the embedded "player" doesn't work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by santajon ( 22325 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:24PM (#46421083) Homepage

    Tried this out last night. It's highly restrictive to the size of the image they select.

    Doesn't fit in the place you want to put it? Find another image.
    Don't want the whole image? Find another image.

    • That's not "why it doesn't work"....that's you wan (Score:5, Insightful)

      by penguinstorm ( 575341 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:40PM (#46421235) Homepage

      Getty: "Here, take these high quality images and use them for free"
      Santajon: "I don't want that image. I want to crop it, and I'd like to apply an artificial aging filter to it so I can look like a douchebag."
      Getty: "That's not the image we're offering...for free. If you buy the image, you'll have a file that you can use however you'd like."
      Santajon: "Why would I buy an image...photography is free."

      That conversation doesn't end well for anybody except Santajon.

      Take the free image that's offered or take your own damn picture and use it. The fact that you have to pay to use someone else's product is not a valid complaint.

      • Re:That's not "why it doesn't work"....that's you (Score:5, Informative)

        by lemur3 ( 997863 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @03:38PM (#46421913)

        the problem is that if GETTY actually intends people to use these images in their IFRAME embedded player.. then giving people at least the option of choosing the proper size for the layout of their little blog news site/food blog/whatever will go a long way towards doing that..

        i tried this yesterday and i don't think id ever use it... it was difficult to find embeddable images and once one did find an image that one could embed: you were faced with an image that didnt fit the layout.

        • I'm quite sure that the embedding tool will change/evolve/improve over time based on mutual desire...keeping in mind that you're not paying for it, so your desires are probably a relatively low priority.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xtifr ( 1323 )

          "The problem is that if the FSF actually intends people to use GNU code in their own creations, then giving people at least the option of relicensing that code in any way that might support their business model will go a long way towards doing that."

          I don't see how what Getty is doing here (use it for free in this way, or pay money to use it some other way) is any different from what many companies are doing with GPL'd code (use it this way for free or pay money to use it some other way). Other than "in thi

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by ceview ( 2857765 )
          I just tried this on my site and the main problem I have is that their caption for 'getty images' is really too big. It needs to be just a simple caption one line style. I think it is sufficient to have the image clickthru to getty.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by santajon ( 22325 )

        Thanks for sticking words in my mouth.

        To start, you can't buy images from Getty. You may only buy licenses to use an image.

        Second, The purpose of the program is to offer images at no cost to non-commercial users. I evaluated for those purposes. For such a program to be successful the images must be useable. I'm suggesting that even non-commercial users will find it difficult to use.

        • No problem man. Anytime.

          To start, your point is true, though ridiculously semantic. If I buy a lifetime exclusive licence for use from Getty, what's the difference between that an "buying" the image. Are you planning on giving Getty your credit card number so that you can have the images on your hard drive and never look at them?

          To the people who are using Getty, they are "buying images." Yes, the purchase comes with conditions.

          Second, the images are usable--they just didn't fit your use case. Have you got

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Getty: "Here, take these high quality images and use them for free"
        Santajon: "I don't want that image. I want to crop it, and I'd like to apply an artificial aging filter to it so I can look like a douchebag."
        Getty: "That's not the image we're offering...for free. If you buy the image, you'll have a file that you can use however you'd like."
        Santajon: "Why would I buy an image...photography is free."

        That conversation doesn't end well for anybody except Santajon.

        Take the free image that's offered or take your own damn picture and use it. The fact that you have to pay to use someone else's product is not a valid complaint.

        With an embedded player DRMing their use these photo's are not free. Not even monetarily - they are being paid for by an explicit Getty advertising link.

        Unfortunately this is typical marketer dishonesty.

      • photography is free

        No, it isn't.

    • You can't resize the source image, but you can resize the iframe and it will scale to fit. Scaling above the source image size will obviously lead to reduced quality/blurriness, but you can shrink it. If you want to have it be responsive design (and scale width/height due to browser size) it's fairly straightforward to chuck a little jquery at it, as is pretty common when dealing with making iframes responsive. I imagine a jquery plugin akin to fitvids.js will be along shortly to make it easier.

      For chucking

  • New Revenue Stream (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06, 2014 @02:32PM (#46421185)

    I also submitted this story. Here's a link to the Bloomburg Businessweek article. [businessweek.com]

    From T other FA: "Eventually, Getty could include advertisements within the embedded images, much like YouTube videos embedded on personal blogs show ads [...] But Peters says Getty hasn’t figured out how exactly that will work."

    Note that they are also specifically *not* stating that they will stop filing lawsuits over unlicensed use of their images, although they're moving away from that in the case of non-commercial use. The big question is, where will Getty draw the line and decide what is and isn't a "commercial use" of their images? And, is this a means for them to justify seeking larger payments for unlicensed use - because they will be able to argue that there's a "free alternative"?

  • Get used to using them, expect a charge to come later.

  • Getty Images will serve the image in an embedded player

    And as we all know, there is not, and has never been, any way to take a copy of something displayed on your screen. NO WAY.

    • They've acknowledge this. This is the business risk they're taking. Mod this down.

      • Just because they've acknowledged it, doesn't mean it's not worth pointing how dumb it seems.

        • They point out that anyone bwi wants an image they find in the Getty catalog will find it via image search and steal it. The goal is to offer the embed as a slightly easier way to get the image for free and so have some home of monetizing use from people who will not pay.

          That's reasonable.

  • Good thing I run FlashBlock :)

  • Love this part (Score:4, Funny)

    by hAckz0r ( 989977 ) on Thursday March 06, 2014 @03:55PM (#46422117)
    Quote: will continue to “pursue online infringing use as we’ve done traditionally.”

  • Saying nothing that a lot of these images are actually in the public domain, which means you can copy them however you want, and are not, and never ever, bound by any of gettys licenses.

    Like this here:
    http://www.gettyimages.ch/deta... [gettyimages.ch]
    Whatever getty says is moot, you can copy this over wikimedia commons and tag it "public domain", because replications of two-dimensional works of art always retain the original copyright -- public domain, in this case. there is NO right getty has on this, what-so-ever. Actuall

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