Gettys Says Google makes Stealing Photos Easy

[CameraQuest]

Getty Images filed a complaint with the European Union's Anti Trust Division

Saying Google makes it easy to unknowingly steal copyrighted photos

its midnight, do you know where your photos are?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Getty is the real thief. They've driven down the prices of stock photography, while paying the photographers they represent almost nothing.

I like Google; I make a lot of money selling prints and licensing photos to people who find my work through Google image search. I'd never sell anything living in Fort Waste if it were not for Google.

If people are having trouble with image thieves, they should stop posting high res images online. Mine are small, so users have to contact me with money in hand to get the high-resolution file.

 

[emraphoto]

i was going to comment but Chris has it covered.

 

[charjohncarter]

I didn't know what to comment so I read Chris' comment. I'm with Chris and emraphoto.

 

[jpa66]

Well, let's make it three. Totally agree.

 

[JP Owens]

You mean Getty is just figuring this out? I agree that Getty is the real villian here,though.

 

[BlackXList]

Chris covered most of what I was going to say about Getty,although their recent decision to give away/make available 35 million photos royalty free through Google apps (in some cases without consulting the photographers who were affected) should be mentioned too.

It's somewhat ironic that they're now complaining about Google.

 

[charjohncarter]

I don't really know much about these internet privacy fights, but for us that do analog is our case better if we can produce the negative or slide? Or is it the same for digital images which are just in the cloud (exif)?

 

[JP Owens]

Digital, analog, in the end it's pretty much that Google can do what they want to do with most of our images. The problem with an inherent (because you took the photo) or commercial (because you registered the image) copyright is that you have to defend it legally. For most of us, the cost of defending that copyright far exceeds any financial value the image will ever have. Neither Getty nor Google have much to worry about if they steal images.

The best we can do is ask nicely that the offending company please stop violating our copyright. Sometimes that works.

As Chris pointed out, the best way to protect your images is to never put anything but small, low resolution images on the Internet.

 

[wolves3012]

The problem nowadays is that anything digital can be cloned or altered in an almost unlimited fashion, so copyright has become unenforceable in this area (and many others). If you willingly submit a high quality image on the internet, which is inherently a worldwide distribution network, you must be very naiive to believe you can retain control over it. Someone, somewhere, sometime will see no need to pay you or give you proper credit. I don't condone such theft but that's the reality. Add to this that many people happily share their photos on social media sites and give up any rights, so that to them this is normality.

 

[sevo]

You mean Getty is just figuring this out? I agree that Getty is the real villian here,though.

Getty do not have exclusivity to most images they represent - indeed (given that they have several times accessed me over images never traded through an agency) they often do not have any rights at all. Their USP was not buying the primary publishing rights, but having a huge catalogue (by buying out publishers and agencies back stock archives, which tend to have no unlimited rights to the originals). So at the core they attempted to monopolize image research rather than image ownership. It is quite obvious that Google gets into the way of that, with photographers or primary agents linked straight from Google there is no more need to go to Getty. The whole business model of Getty is going the way of the Dodo - if they want to survive, they must make it legally compulsory to use their services...

 

[btgc]

I wonder if Getty is taking proper care of images they are selling. If they don't provide authorized access only to full rez pictures why blame Google? What do I miss here.

 

[Steve M.]

The only way you can protect your images online is to not put them there in the first place. I won't even drop off a CD of art work w/ a gallery anymore (they stopped wanting to see slides eons ago). They can come by and look at the work, or I can swing by w/ some of the stuff. That's the only way it happens. You just can't trust people in this dicital age, as people don't "get it" about appropriating someone else's images. It's a totally different mindset than what used to exist, exactly as wolves3012 so concisely put it.

Google is not your friend on any level.

 

[Erik van Straten]

If you see what kind of photos people like and are prepared to pay for, we shouldn't worry at all.

Erik.