Gettyimages.com bit the hand that feeds it recently when it went after a small design firm for copyright violation. The small design firm, had purchased a rights-managed image from Gettyimages.com. When the design firm showcased the piece on their website, Gettyimages contacted them demanding payment for usage of the rights-managed image. In the end, the firm was required to pay $900 for usage of the image up to that point, and would have had to pay more if they chose to keep the image in their portfolio.
What is amazing about this turn of events is Getty’s inflexibility and unwillingness to recognize the thousands of dollars this firm had already brought to Getty in sales of their images. As creatives in a highly competitive, and somewhat faultering industry of professional photography, you might expect a company to take into account the fact that we direct clients to their products. We choose which sites to search, how much to budget, and whether or not we are going to present this product to paying customers. In most other industries, we would expect a commission for finding that sale. Real estate, finance, fine art, cars, boats, antiques, clothes… the list goes on. In the very least, we would expect a recognition that it was an oversight of the small print. At most we would expect gratitude for the business, in the form of credit, or the ability to showcase work well done.
Does this now mean that we need to be careful about submitting work that uses rights managed work to professional competition. What happens if our work actually wins, and gets published. Will we be required to pay, yet another fee to showcase the work? The practice is absolutely absurd.
I recommend to all my students that they don’t use Gettyimages when looking for images. There are many other sites, smaller companies, who would welcome the business.
