9 July 2008 197 views No Comment Print This Post

So, the big buzz today is Getty Images pushing up on^* Flickr. Haven’t heard it? Well, Team Flickr over at Flickr.com and Getty Images agreed to create a “Flickr Collection on Getty“. But what does it mean? Should you care? Is it a trap? Are you gonna be stripped of your rights and your images sold out from under you?

Well, from what I’ve read about it, the partnership would mean “Getty can sell Flickr images.” But that would be misleading. Many bloggers are taking that angle, though.

Cool?
A little bit of digging reveals that Getty and Flickr may now approach all those awesome photographers on Flickr to sell their images. From this, it sounds like photographers would be invited to participate. So, just using Flickr would not make your images available for sale. Using Flickr would make your image available for consideration of Team Flickr to approach you about it’s use for sale. You can also guess, then, that not every shmoe is going to be able to sell his stuff.

The details aren’t there, but Rights Managed, Royalty Free and Rights Ready licensing options will be available. The rates will supposedly be in line with the current market.

That’s sound pretty cool, if you’re out snapping and catch a couple good ones.

Flickr’s Kakul Srivastava says, “From our perspective, on the Flickr side, we’re not expecting this will be a huge stream of monetization for our members.” Hmm.

WTF?

In 2006, Getty bought iStockPhoto.com. iStockPhoto is one of the largest microstock websites; I think it actually is the largest. The photographers share at iStockPhoto is the worst of the microstock sites, though. Photographers initially only get 20% of the sale.

The people at Photoshelter have been crying foul. Photoshelter recently launched a new stock photography initiative, the Photoshelter Collection. Photoshelters CEO, Allen Murabayashi, sounds a bit like a “the best defense is a good offense” kind of guy in his “How Getty Is Killing the Stock Photo Industry” blog entry.

Murabayashi also claims, “In this new deal, Getty Images will hand-select photographers from flickr, and tie up their images in their standard exclusive agreement and compensation schedule. This means 20% on royalty-free images, and an average 35% on rights-managed images.”

Getty’s restrictions are that the image and no similar images may be sold anywhere else. But you could sell something else through another agency. Got 5 good pics from a series? Getty only wants one? Those other four would have to stay out of the market.

Meh?

I’m not sure I care about most of this personally. Until you get your call from Flickr, this probably won’t matter to you either. My Flickr pics probably aren’t good enough to get noticed. And they are on Flickr because I don’t see value in them through other channels like Photoshelter Collection, or iStockPhoto.

O, rly?

The biggest concern is perhaps this claim by Murabayashi about Getty’s move, “It’s about locking out competition from the industry to ensure a continued, virtual monopoly. Getty pays flickr for an “exclusive” deal to be their preferred stock content distributor because they are threatened by an open platform like PhotoShelter.”

So, Getty may not really care about Flickr images as a revenue stream, but may be just making a move to box everyone out of Flickr. No one likes a monopoly, but is that what it is? I don’t know, yet.

Flickr has posted a preemptive FAQ (pFAQ?) to address questions before they come up. And some of the question will probably come up a lot. Especially in light of all the most recent other buzz about Flickr; namely the Flickr API and usage rights abuse. But, let’s try not to cloud the issue, K?

^* What does it mean to push up on someone? I have no idea, but if you know “Push Up On Me” by Rihanna from her Good Girl Gone Bad album, you can tell me.

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