Squeezing the stock photographer
According to a Photo District News (PDN) online article that was published yesterday, The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has released a memo that “… all but advises Getty <Getty Images; a stock photo agency> contributors to quit the agency and find other ways to distribute their stock photographs if they can.” Meanwhile, another photographer group, American Photographic Artists (APA) has “… issued a veiled threat of legal action against the stock photo agency.”
The “hoopla” is about Getty Images’ “… new contract terms for its contributors, which enables the agency to move rights-managed images that haven’t been licensed for three years or longer to its royalty-free collections, and make royalty-free images available in its subscription products.”
In a statement to PDN, Getty Images defended its contract changes saying that it is “… updating our creative contributor agreements so that more content can be used in more ways that help our business meet current and future customer needs and grow sales in keeping with market changes.” 
In an APA press release distributed April 27, APA stated that the Getty contract modifications “… clearly signal that Getty Images’ top priority is expanding its own market share by whatever means necessary, irrespective of the damage it causes to the rights and interest of contributing photographers and image partners.”
According to ASMP, Getty says that contributors will be allowed to exclude a limited number of their rights-managed images from being moved to royalty-free collections, for example, in cases in which models were promised that their likeness would never be used in royalty-free images. Photographers would have to exclude sparingly, however, and justify the exclusion requests in writing by May 20. Getty reserves the right to accept or reject exclusion requests at its discretion.
In other news posted April 29, Getty Images announced its acquistion of PicScout, a company based in Israel that developed image identification and tracking technology used by stock photographers to attempt to prevent unauthorized use of images. Getty declined to comment on a report that the deal was worth about $20 million. Getty announced that it will continue to make PicScout’s technology available to Getty competitors. Getty CEO Jonathan Klein said that, “Getty Images does not plan to change pricing as a result of the transaction.”
Corbis, a PicScout customer and one of Getty Images’ largest competitors had no comment since the acquisition was just announced.
-Bill at
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