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Getty Images

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Getty Images, Inc. (NYSE: GYI) is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington USA. It is the leading supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 70 million still images and illustrations and more than 30,000 hours of stock film footage. It targets three markets — creative professionals (advertising and graphic design), the media (print and online publishing), and corporate communication departments for other businesses. Getty has distribution offices around the world and continues to capitalize on the Internet and CD-ROM collections for distribution. The company has also begun offering custom photo services for corporate clients.

1 History
2 Competition
3 Acquisitions
4 Copyright enforcement
5 References
6 External links

History

In 1993, Mark Getty and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC, which today is the principal shareholder of Getty Images. Mark Getty is the company's chairman. In September 1997, Getty Communications, as it was called at the time, merged with PhotoDisc, Inc. to form Getty Images. In September 2007, Getty Images adopted a new pricing policy for web image sales that has caused a great deal of controversy among photographers. This policy created a new price package of only $49 for small web images. Controversially, this price was intended to apply to both rights-managed and royalty-free images. In the past, rights-managed images have commanded a price that could easily be 10 times that amount. As a result, a number of international photographers' organizations have complained to Getty. The repricing has occurred at a time when Getty Images' share price and profitability have been under pressure. The Getty family owns about 20 percent of the company.

Competition

There are dozens of companies selling stock photography who compete with Getty, but the two largest companies are Jupitermedia Corporation, a public company formerly known as Internet.com, and Corbis, a private company controlled by Bill Gates. These three—Getty, Jupiter and Corbis—are in the process of "rolling-up" the stock photo business by buying out the many family-owned businesses that created the field. In recent months, Getty bought out Digital Vision, iStockphoto, and Stockbyte, and Jupiter bought Comstock and PictureArts.

Acquisitions

In 2004, Getty bought image.net for $20 million USD. ^[1] On February 9, 2006, the controversial and revolutionary microstock photo website, iStockphoto, was acquired by Getty Images for $50 million USD. ^[2] In 2007, Getty successfully purchased its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207mil. The acquisition meant that Getty Images gained control of WireImage (Entertainment, creative, and sports photography), FilmMagic (fashion and red carpet photography), Contour Photos (portrait and studio photography) and a host of other subsidiaries including "Master Delegates" who include: Gallo Images in Johannesburg, Touchline Photo in Cape Town, Isifa Image Service in Prague, Czech Republic, Laura Ronchi in Italy^[3]

Copyright enforcement

Getty Images uses a firm called PicScout, to scan the web and Archive.org for unauthorized and unlicensed usages of its protected images. Websites that are found to be in violation are queried via the Whois database and sent financial settlements that retroactively licensed the image. However, the settlement also demanded damages, which were said to have been incurred against the copyright holder. Thousands of these letters have been sent out, yet according to the Wall Street Journal in October of 2005, Getty had not taken any of these potential cases to court.^[4]^[5] However, Getty published a notice to its contributors describing how a court decision in New York makes it more difficult to obtain damages for infringement.^[6] The article does not state whether Getty Images was a party involved in the court case. Their corporate counsel for copyright enforcement is Laura Malone, who used to work in the entertainment industry as an actress. ^[7]