The British Journal of Photography has just run a very interesting story
I have to say that I certainly had not seen this coming. The difficulty for everyone else (photographers that is) who are not the corporate
Getty (and I include their editorial supplier photographers) is it will have an
almost immediate effect on every other supplier of editorial ‘smudgery’ (Smudger - Fleet Street slang for Photographer).
Not so much a race to the bottom, but the floor
simply vanishing under our feet...
The effect of this move by Getty
could be to remove an entire market (editorial stock photography). One
understands the basics of taking over a market by reducing the cost – indeed there
have been many famous exponents, but even ‘Walmart’ don’t actually give it all
away.
The consequence may well be that
theft of images by companies will actually increase even though there is now a
vast source of free imagery available legitimately. Many ' bloggers' and other users of the internet
have been working on the basis that everything is free on the Internet,
something that up until now Getty appear to have been agreement with professional
creators; that 'free' is an incorrect interpretation of what the Internet really is. Now
Getty have given into this abandonment of the International Copyright law, and
sanction wholesale use of their work. Good for Getty – in that this is a data
mining exercise, but no so good for those individual creators relying on the
Getty payments every month; payments that most if not all Getty freelance photographers
have seen decrease by a huge percentage in recent years.
For everyone else (photo creators, suppliers and aggregators) this
is going to have an (adverse)effect. Will internet content users recognise that this is
simply a Getty initiative or that this move simply vindicate what they have wanted
to believe all along (everything on the net is free); with the consequence that
other creators will find that their work is further stolen and used without
permission, infringers pointing to Getty as their motivation. Will would-be infringers
realise that the copyright laws have not actually changed?
Getty has believed in its market
domination for many years, and we have seen them buy-out many of the agencies
(inc Tony Stone, Allsport and many more), that were of very high quality, and had become household names. This latest
move simply builds upon this, and is a calculated to undermine the smaller
creators and suppliers for whom the Getty buy-out is not an option.
It will potentially make it more
difficult for creators who must sell licences. This is a deliberate attempt to annihilate
the current market, and create a new Getty centric one.
But, there could be a positive
effect. This move *should* make specialist creator controlled collections even
more valuable, and therefore more important that each of us (individual creators)
chase up every theft. Copyright law is on our side thankfully. It is going to
be difficult, but we have to stand firm against Getty queering our pitch.
Interesting that fellow creators
in the music industry whilst they have found sales of discs and CDs etc. fall,
they have managed to take control of the copyright situation on the internet
and with on-line sales through access ports such as 'I-tunes'. Instead of giving
up and letting the theft of music tracks on-line go unchecked they have come up
with new revenue streams that make theft less attractive and on-line paid access
actually desirable for the consumer and user. If only we could do this in the
image industry instead of the big aggregators constantly undercutting each other
to the advantage of no one and at the direct cost to the creator.
It is of course a carefully
planned move by the image giant. From its very inception the Getty Juggernaut
has been all about domination of the image market. This latest move is all about data
mining.
By supplying markets which are
not great revenue generators (for Getty)
with freebies they will be ensuring that each image leads directly back to Getty.
"......since all the images are served
by Getty Images, we’ll have access to the information on who and how that image
is being used and viewed, and we’ll reserve the right to utilise that data to
the benefit of our business.”
So these free pictures will put Getty all over the Internet.
Very clever for the company that can afford to do it, and do it at the expense
of all other suppliers in the photo marketplace.
The flip side of this for independent photographic creators
could be that independent specialist collection
*should* become more valuable if managed properly. The issue now is how the
other agencies will respond.
Getty is looking for comprehensive data mining and data
utilisation. If other agencies simply follow Getty in a knee-jerk like manner
without the accompanying data analysis approach then they and their suppliers (us) will
lose out big time. Geek led Alamy and
Corbis will be ones to watch...
Posts
scary times indeed.
ReplyDelete