Flickr extends deal with Getty Images (update)

GEE.. THANKS GETTY AND FLICKR. now i can throw the $50000 worth of camera gear i bought into the toilet

this has clrealy taken it too far.
for the past 4 years i have been fighting my rear end off. just to secure decent jobs in photography
and now thanks to getty and flickr's actions my job is truly ruined now.

Why?

Why couldn't the person requesting the licence just get in touch with the photographer and allow them to negotiate their own fee for use? Are photographers really so stupid as to give Getty the control of their images?

Cue loads of insane comments of pleasure and gratitude from the lemming amateur contributors.

Raise the bar

It may be a worrying time for professional photographers, but that is the way photography is going I'm afraid.

If your pictures aren't good enough to sell, then maybe you're in the wrong job. You'll just have to up your game and prove your value along with the rest of us.

If you truely can't take better photographs than amateurs on Flickr (not to say there aren't some fantastic artists on Flickr) then you'll just have to get better at what you do.

I do think that many people on Flickr won't really understand the value of their photos though and perhaps be convinced to sell at way under their actual value. That is the worrying trend here.

As long as the photographers are fairly compensated for their work, I think this is quite a good idea.

To add

I don't think the photos are automatically sold through Getty, the photographer has to agree to the sale. Getty is merely the vehicle to do that.

So if someone likes a photos, they click to license it, then Getty get in touch with the photographer and they can say yes or no.

But I agree, if the photograph wasn't good enough to be licensed before the image was put on Getty why would it suddenly be good enough?

I figure the photos on Getty will get more views as they'll be in the Getty library.

wow bye bye job

it doesn't matter how much experience you have. or how good your photographs are.
getty DOES NOT CARE.
if you show signs of knowledge regarding copyright. etc they will ignore you immediately.

if you have a decent photograph and no clue on image rights. they will immediately ask you.

also. i know many photographers whom have well over 20 years experience and they too are still being undercut by actions like this.

i've been shooting for several years and after 2008 my yearly income has dramatically increased thanks to several key factors.

one of them being DSLR's decreasing in price and requiring less skill to us

this must stop
take photos for all i care.
just leave selling images to professionals and advanced amateurs

raising the bar won't make a difference

raising the standard will not make any difference to this.
the bar is already at the highest it can be yet companies like getty are taking advantage of the clueless amateurs and encouraging them to sell sell sell..

regardless of how high the standard is.
getty does not care for quality in a sense as certain companies would.

they care more about profit and cheap images.

hence the requested photographer recieves only 20-30% of the selling price.

professionals signed to agencies already have troubles since their agents take roughly 55% of their income. which is NOT MORAL.

thanks to this action professional photographers will all go bankrupt

Pro vs Am is not the issue here

The issue here is not a pro vs amateur one. There are many great amateur photographers out there quite happy with there current jobs.
The issue is firstly, amateurs are unlikely to know the true value of their work.
Secondly, Getty generously give you a whole 30% of the fee.... Sorry, but I thought it was MY image, so shouldn't that be the other way around?
Finally, why use Getty? Mny photo buyers trawl Flickr anyway, so why not add a pricing module such as the Photoshelter system and let Flickr become a great big marketplace, dealing direct?

Ripoff

I've had people approach me via flickr and my own websites asking for the rights to use images beyond the scope of the Creative Commons license I apply.

Let's not forget the current terms of using Getty via flickr involve giving them *exclusive* rights to sell a given image. As in, thou shalt not also present an image for sale on RedBubble or any other stock site.

All for 20-30% of an "average" $500 (a meaningless statistic: show me the price distribution and chance that any one image of mine will be bought). I value my photographs more highly than that, even if it's just me that views them!

Why is Getty doing this?

One has to wonder why Getty is doing this. Are they that worried about the strength of their core business that they are scrabbling for any crumbs that they can find? Or is it that they realise publishers are already trawling the networking and file sharing sites already (recent reports about the Mail would seem to confirm this) and they simply want to control the action?

Either way the one thing we are all sure of is that Getty are not philanthropists and are only doing this because they perceive there is profit to be had (for Getty that is).

Many professional editorial (and other) photographers already use Flickr as part of their marketing strategy - indeed I do so myself, but I am not sure that I would want to include Getty in my way of working. The prices talked about $5 -$400 are hardly inspiring, and combined with the Getty supplier percentage of 20%-30% (compared say to Alamy's 60%), frankly doesn't make me want to leap up and get involved.

If a client say a publisher wants to use your image (from Flickr) they will contact you anyway and you can negotiate a good deal - I do so regularly. As soon as Getty get involved, and as they don't seem to be marketing this, just inserting themselves into the process, the price negotiated goes down and the photographers gets a tiny proportion of the sale. Doesn't seem like a great deal to me.

Why would anyone want that?

As it has been laid out this is Getty getting something for nothing, inserting themselves into places they are not needed, and to the advantage of no one other than, well, Getty.

Those not aware of the market might get some kind of kick out of donating money to the Getty machine, but I honestly can't see this being a long term problem, that is unless there is something else to this scheme that we haven't been told.

www.petejenkinsphotothoughts.blogspot.com/

Unfair contracts

I denied several years ago the Getty contract when they bought the agency I had a conrtact with. They offered a 25% share and that is an unfair contract to my eyes. Why now 30% to Flickr members? I think they run out of photographs. No professional will deliver at that rate. Getty was and still is doing an unfair business and people should know that.

Have fun with the deluge of infringment ligitation.

Nobody's job is in jeopardy.
It will prove an insurmountable obstacle to verify the copyrights and authenticity of images. And many future lawsuits await.
Any goober can trawl Flickr for images and put them up on their page as their own. With 4 billion+ images, vetting them is more hassle and grief than using established photographers and stock agencies.

Photographers deserve better

Just because it's the industry rate, doesn't mean it's right. I think all skilled photographers, amateur or professional, deserve better than 20-30% of an already pitiful price. I'm a bit concerned about Getty's motives, and will not be adding my Flickr photos to this program anytime soon.

P.S. - Kudos to BJP

By the way, I'd like to express my thanks to BJP for excellent coverage on this topic. I'm a fan, and wish the print subscriptions were available in the U.S. (At last check, they weren't.)

Getty Monopoly

Getty seem to be trying to create a monopoly (Rex, Wireimage etc. all now owned by them). They have lowered the market value of all pictures and the sooner The Monopolies Commission starts to investigate them and their undercutting practises the better.

I Don't think so!

"Flickr contributors will receive 30% of the fee and the average price for RM is ~$500.
RF images are licensed at set prices based upon the file-size the customer purchases. Flickr contributors will receive 20% of the fee and the average price for RF is ~$200. "

Don't believe the hype...I have been a contributor for many years with a significant number of images and the gross license fees they suggest have not been achieved for a few years.

My take

I am a member of various stock libraries (Alamy, Gekko, FotoLibra, Agefotostock et al) and joined Flickr two years ago as it came up in my StatCounter of images found on Google). At the end of last year, I joined Getty via Flickr (with great reservations regarding exclusivity, no choice of RM or RF and their appallingly high commission) but within a month, they sold an image (RM) for US$770 and they sold the same image for $165 two months later. While I have allowed Request to Licence, I still have great reservations. As Getty is really acting as a conduit between the client and the photographer, how can it justify charging the 70 or 80% commission? Probably the one advantage is that the photographer does get the choice of selling the image and may have some leverage to sell the image as RM (I dislike RF) whether Getty likes it or not. The Flickr/Getty forum is generally irritated as to why Flickr will not allow "commercialisation" of the site (ie adding a second link to negotiate directly with the photographer) but is in bed with Getty regarding licensing images. Its like being a little bit pregnant! Getty must have paid a lot of dough to Yahoo!