Getty Images Makes Photos Free to Use
The largest provider of professional quality photos on the web will now offer its photos for free. If you have visited the Getty Images website before, you have noticed a watermark and prices that go along with any photo.
That has now changed as the site will no longer charge licensing fees for anyone using their images on a Facebook page or blog, for example. Getty has incorporated an embed code for their images. A feature commonly used by YouTube and Twitter, the embed code allows users to grab the image and embed it into a post for free use.
Senior Vice President of Business Development Craig Peters told CNET, “What we’re trying to do is take a behavior that already exists and enable it legally, then try to get some benefits back to the photographer primarily through attribution and linkage.”
Peters also mentioned there are other monetization options presented down the road with the embed code. Have you noticed ads on an embedded YouTube video before? That capability comes with any embedded content. Getty could potentially post ads within an embedded image without compensating the user of the image.
Although not all of Getty’s images will be available for free, more than 35 million will be. This is a major move by Getty in an attempt to adapt to today’s world of copy and paste. What do you think of the move by Getty?
Published on: March 6, 2014