Getty, the popular global photolibrary carnivore, has now set up a Getty group at Flickr, the popular global photo-sharing site.
Getty's intention is of course to find tens of thousands of saleable images on Flickr and market them, a project which will go live in March. Despite Flickr's T&C expressly prohibiting use of the system for commercial purposes, Yahoo! seem to have had no qualms about agreeing this 'monetising' of Flickr photos, probably because they need tihe money.
Many of the Flickrati are of course excited by the prospect of 'recognition' and representation by the world's largest photolibrary and are looking forward to the prospect of serious money from their work, even if they do gain only ~30% of gross in the usual Getty manner. They also seem unaware of Getty's ubiquitous price-slashing subscription lock-in deals with publishers, and that Getty's once-premium brand now includes microstock. Thomas Hawk says that for Yahoo!, owners of Flickr, 'one of the big reasons for choosing Getty for the deal was that iStockphoto is one of the best companies in the world at clearing images'. Apparently Flickr is being trawled for microstock fodder.
This collision of cash and web 2.0 community has its problems. Flickr's default licensing for punters' photos is Creative Commons to encourage non-commercial photosharing. Getty now wishes to market many CC images as Rights Managed, and they suggest anyone whom they approach to offer representation should revoke CC licenses and alter the status of their image to all-rights-reserved copyright.
Unfortunately CC licensing is essentially irrevocable. It is designed to freely facilitate sharing and dissemination. Once images are in circulation that allow free use and reproduction it is hard to see how Getty will manage to enforce RM fees or damages against infringers who may well be legitimately using CC-licensed copies. But Getty has a lot of weight and a lot of lawyers, and a lot of history for coming down hard on infringers . Whether they deserve it or not might not matter.
Quite how this will play out remains to be seen, but it's likely to be messy. Flickr's API is widely used to embed photos in third-party websites, and is known to disregard the license status assigned at Flickr. This has already led to many infringements where copyright photos have been used without permission. Anyone legitimately using CC photos via the API will have no way of knowing if the status has changed to full copyright, and Getty's large-scale use of Picscout to detect infringing copies will catch them apparently infringing copyright.
On existing form, Getty will deal with this by having lawyers send a threatening demand that a large amount of money (typically £2000-£7000) be paid wthin 7 days else court action will be commenced. Most recipients will be unable to prove that the images ever had CC status, and furious that the Flcikr free lunch now has a large bill attached. In the long term this seems likely to undermine Flickr's popularity for easygoing sharing, and earn Getty yet more black marks for 'extortion'.
CC licenses are irrevocable, even if Getty find it inconvenient. A screenshot proving the image was supplied with a CC license (and used within its terms) should defeat any claim against infringement.
©A admin
What if a screenshot is taking of the flickr page showing the license, before copying the photo on your blog ? Will that be upheld in court as proof ?
I frequently use Flickr CC images in my blog entitled - http://armchairtravelogue.blogspot.com/ as well as in Google Earth Community Forum (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0). My blog as well as GEC Gorum are ads free and I don't derive any monetary benefit from my posts.
As a normal practice whenever I use an image in my post I inform the owner/photographer after making the post.
With Getty entering the field I am now confused. Can I continue to use the CC images as per my earlier practice or do I have to seek prior approval from Getty for use of CC images?
I will be thankful if someone can advise me on this subject.
Don, I can only suggest you read the thread and elsewhere on this site rather than steaming in with a head full of fatuous caricatures that are all your own.
©A admin
Odd that a website supposedly supporting photographer's copyright should be so supportive of the free sharing nature of Flickr just to take a knock at Getty. A year on, I guess you've realised that the Getty Flickr Collection is indeed selling for premium prices and is not microstock; you might want to update that, but a little accuracy might spoil your fun.
I'm also astounded that you take umbridge with Getty's attempts to persue copyright infringers: "Getty will deal with this by having lawyers send a threatening demand that a large amount of money be paid". Nasty evil Getty, protecting the intellectual property of their photographers vs Nice soft and cuddly Flickr giving it all away.
Some balance please.
Not 'breaking' the CC license in the sense of violating its terms, but breaking it logically.
Creative Commons terms are a recipe for confusion:-
This provides for some very limited revisions of the licensing. For instance a more liberal variant of CC license could be subsequently adopted. You can cease distributing the work entirely but you can't recall or alter the terms on works already licensed. CC is effectively irrevocable. It is perpetual for the term of copyright and it is designed to facilitate viral distribution.
Having released under CC license, it's nonsense to subsequently define the same image as 'all rights reserved'. Some rights have been perpetually granted under license that encourage redistribution. CC versions of the image already 'out there' are unaffected by any license revision. If you change your mind and revoke the CC license or stop distributing, this doesn't change. Anyone who previously licensed the work under CC can distribute it with its CC license.
So it's incorrect that "future use must be under the RF construct". Any work ever released as CC is free to proliferate indefinitely. It can be re-used and redistributed within the terms of its CC license by as many users as can get their hands on a CC copy.
Creative Commons used to overtly caution that their licenses were irrevocable, for this reason, but as advocates for CC they do a rather poor job of explaining why CC may not always be a good thing.
The Getty/Flickr policy is a recipe for confusion, conflict and intimidation. The same image will be circulating on the web with different licenses. Getty's use of Picscout to crawl the web looking for infringeing copies is likely to discover legitimately licensed CC versions. Getty may then treat these as infringements of its RF license even though it is no such thing.
As outlined in the FAQ, many thousands of users have received intimidating letters from Getty lawyers, typically demanding between £1500-£7000. It is then up to the user to pay the penalty or prove they have a legitimate license in place else face court action.
Unless Getty exclude former CC material from Picscout patrols, there seem likely to be a lot of nasty surprises headed for bona-fide CC users.
©A admin
It's not "breaking" the CC license to, within the CC legal code's own terms, change the licensing terms for future use of an image. (My apologies for necro'ing this thread...I'm researching the topic and fell into this discussion) Nothing about the thread on Flickr or Getty's response indicates a lack of awareness that prior CC use of the image can continue within that framework, but future use must be under the RF construct.
It has been pointed out that
This has apparently changed at some point. The old Flickr 'set a default license' page strongly encouraged CC and looked like this:
The new version, which can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/profile_license.gne when logged in to Flickr, looks like this:-
Whether this change is in any way related to Flickr's new arrangement with Getty can only be speculated upon.
At the time the original article was written there were contradictory sources asserting that RM or RF would be used by Getty. RM seemed more authoritative, but I see from the Flickr group discussion that a Getty rep. is now stating RF will be used. As an aside, I wonder if that indicates Flcikr stock is headed for iStockPhoto rather than Getty's higher ticket non-microstock RF? Does anyone know?
As far as the license mess is concerned I don't actually think it makes much difference. Getty are asking for exclusive distribution and sales rights and this is clearly impossible to reconcile with images that are already out in the wild with a valid and irrevocable CC license. Getty seems no less likely to pursue an infringement because an image is RF. Their Picscout crawling of the web doesn't care whether an image is RM or RF, only that the user didn't pay for a license from Getty. CC will cause false positives on infringements that aren't.
The basic point remains that the exclusivity they insist upon is simply not possible once an image has been released CC, and CC cannot be revoked according to its own, pre-existing terms. Whatever limited rights the photographer reserved by the particular flavour of CC chosen comprises the maximum rights Getty can sell. Quite often CC will have reserved commercial rights, so Getty should be free to market those. But on previous form, any apparent infringement, commercial or not, is met with a hefty bill from Getty's lawyers. That's where the danger lies : Getty's tactics for detection enforcement are a horrible mismatch with the share-and-share-alike ethos of most of Flickr,
©A admin
Converted?
How you can release an image with a licence that freely permits copying, then later hope to revoke those license terms for more restrictive terms? The image may have meanwhile been freely copied. In fact the Creative Commons legal code is aware of this possibility and says:
This makes it clear that Getty are asking rights owners to break the terms of the CC license by requiring photographers to withdraw the license and assert full copyright reservation. They can try and sell RM or RF in parallel, but doing so will make infringing uses within the terms of CC practically impossible to pursue in law, which is no doubt the reason for Getty's requirement.
Also, aside from the difficulty of establishing which license the copy used was subject to, courts in UK (and the USA unless registered with the USCO) will base damages upon provable losses, and the owner has already demonstrated that they will happily give their work away. Which is by the way, a blind spot of microstock pricing as well: nobody can sensibly commence an infringement case in pursuit of damages that amount to peanuts.
There are certainly other issues, but the copyright angle is the concern of this site.
©A admin
You are wrong about CC being converted to RM. They can only go to RF.
I think you miss far larger issues.
Ian Murray
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