In this video, Jonathan Klein from Getty images explains the company’s strategy regarding image sharing. In a few words, he confirms that Getty is fine with image sharing as long as it is non commercial. As soon as a site starts earning revenue, Getty will show it’s teeth. This means, for example, that Getty will let Pinterest freely do it’s thing as long as they are not making any revenue.
Getty’s overall strategy is to avoid suing it’s customers unless if there is a clear criminal intend. Non commercial image sharing is tolerated for the purpose of “visual education” in the long term hope that they will become so essential to our communication, we will have no other choice then eventually license them from Getty when the time comes.
See full video here, taken at SXSW by Techcrunch ( Techcrunch is photo happy these days) :
