SEATTLE, March 6 (UPI) -- Getty Images is set to release millions of stock photos for use by blogs, social media channels and websites, through a new embed tool.
The photo service company said that it will provide users with an easy way to embed images from many of its collections, instead of relying on licensing fees for these images. The images will come without a watermark and will contain an image credit to the company's licensing page.
The change comes after several lawsuits filed by the stock photo company against individuals who had used Getty's images without permission, despite a divisible watermark and the company's policy that images need to be paid for before usage, became very cumbersome.
But this move could in fact generate revenues for Getty. The company will now have access to data through these embeds, and can run ads within the image frames, much like YouTube.
Getty and other stock photo providers are facing a problem similar to that faced by the music industry -- it's not difficult to illegally download content. And litigating such illegal downloads is a long and expensive process.
Getty last year announced a partnership with Pinterest, in which Pinterest paid Getty a fee to access metadata and in turn Getty shared that fee with its photographers.
[Mashable] [The Telegraph]
