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Getty Images proposal is just a trap to kill CC-licensed works and especially direct interactions between author-user.
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Being a happy user of flickr, I read by curiosity the whole proposal and especially the FAQ associated to this proposal from Getty Images. Getty Images is just trying to get rid of the direct relationship between an image author and a user of the photo. Getty Images business is based on the intermediation business to sell work from authors to potential buyers. The current free (free as in "freedom") licenses from Creative Commons allow the author to still keep a commercial interaction with potential buyers even if the work is free and already distributed. It's not uncommon to receive request from potential users of your image willing to not follow the Creative Commons license (even if your work is licensed under BY-SA).
This is a good strength of free license especially with copyleft type license. That created an nice economic ecosystem just like the "dual-licensing" scheme in the free software world (e.g. MySQL). This is a nice direct market avoiding distributor monopoly.
Getty Images is claiming[1] that's not a problem because your work will be under a RF (Royalty Free) license in their catalogue instead of their proprietary RM license/scheme. That's exactly the problem to do so, you won't be able anymore to have direct interaction with potential user or buyer of your work because you are giving an exclusive license to Getty Images for a RF (and just breaking the free ecosystem model especially for SA / copyleft-type licensing).
The purpose of Getty Images is to attract buyers on their catalogue with the RF licensed work and also to show them the RM licensed works. Especially to close the loop of direct interaction between users and authors/photographs.
To avoid the trap. Just tag properly your works, CC license it and provide a nice contact interface for potential user of your images. It works great, many flickr users are directly contacted by potential users of their photo without relying on a third party like Getty.
This initiative with Getty Images looks to me just another way to protect their existing monopolistic activities.
adulau, a happy user of flickr licensing his simple photos under CC-BY-SA , GNU FDL and GNU-GPL.
[1] www.flickr.com/groups/gettyimagesonflickr/discuss/7215761...
Posted at 8:07AM, 7 November 2009 PDT
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There's already a thread about this.
Posted 31 months ago.
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adulau: said "Getty Images is just trying to get rid of the direct relationship between an image author and a user of the photo" .
Interesting theory but just way off. The biggest clients out there for content have no time to contact a photographer, hope they are there and then hope the proper rights and clearances are in place. That's why stock photography started over 60 years ago. As a result of the demand for fast clean, indemnified transactions, regardless of whether the photographer is home to answer the phone/email or not.
It also serves as a useful service for photographers who prefer to have these transactions handled by someone else while they were out shooting. Not everyone wants to do their own sales, marketing, billing and infringement chasing. And not everyone can reach buyers that we can. It's an option, I dont believe joing Getty Images has been enacted into law.
Photographers have always had the option to join or not--then after they join they have had the right to submit only the images they want the stock agency to represent (we are image exclusive--not photographer exclusive).
So contributors can license directly in the way you are advertising here or otherwise, at the same time a stock company works in the background to license other images.
Choosing CC only is a great shoice too--whatever you like best.
Posted 31 months ago.
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It's absolutely true that Getty is acting as a "middleman" and taking its cut from the buyer. I believe it's also true that you cannot apply a CC licence to anything that Getty puts on its database.
The thing is, many buyers are happy to go to the "middleman". Getty has editors that choose the most commercial stuff. That is why clients go to Getty and not flickr directly. Getty's editors need paying, hence the commission the company charges. If you don't want Getty taking a cut, and you think that clients will find your work anyway (and pay big money for it), just don't join the programme.
In many professional spheres, you can only get a job if you go via agencies. We all hate them for taking a percentage. But try surviving without them.
Posted 31 months ago.
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This is true -- we do require exclusive rights to the images placed. For rights managed images there is no other way to manage rights than to be the exclusive licensor. For royalty free we see price shopping when the image is available in more than one place, which means price wars--which in turn means the sale goes to the lowest bidder. We encourage contributors not to submit images to us that they also want to license on their own.
Posted 31 months ago.
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