The images will be licensed under Getty Images’ existing stock contracts as Rights Managed, Royalty Free or Rights Ready pictures. Flickr will only make images available for licensing through Getty Images, but Getty Images will work with each selected photographer individually rather than the organisation as a whole.

Jonathan Klein, CEO of Getty Images and one of its founders, emphasised that the deal ‘had nothing to do with microstock’. Speaking exclusively to BJP, he stated: ‘The terms between Getty and these photographers will be exactly the same as the terms between any other photographers. It’s the same arrangement as with any of our other image partners – National Geographic, Time, Life, Dorling Kindersley and so on.

‘The fees will be at our standard rates. For Royalty Free the average is from $200-$250, for Rights Managed the average fee is between $500-$600, Rights Ready just a little less than Rights Managed. We will get similar prices for this imagery. This is fundamental to the deal. We are taking user-generated content not shot by professionals, and putting it into licensing models predominantly populated by professionals. It’s not microstock.’

Klein estimates that the first Flickr-sourced images will be available to license from Christmas 2008, and says he doesn’t yet know how many photographers will be signed up. Getty Images’ editors will need to sift through six billion images from Flickr’s 47 million members in order to make their selection.

More information, and more exclusive comments from Jonathan Klein will be published in BJP and on our website on 16 July.