Getty images socked with lawsuit for trolling

Getty is the LARGEST stock image provider in the world and the work they license is created by some of the BEST photographers in the world. If you can't afford to use a Getty image then don't use a Getty image. Don't steal from Getty if you do not want to pay the price when caught.

#1 Don't use images you don't have a legitimate license for.

#2 If you try to use an image under fair use doctrine make sure you are prepared to pay the piper if a judge decides you did not have fair use rights.

#3 Get a clue before you use images. In other words, stop pirating images and using images that you don't know who the source is or what the license terms are.

#4 Know the sources of your images and the license terms or be prepared to pay invoice price, or 3 times the license price which is a normal punitive fee for stealing an image.

#5 Rights managed images regularly license for hundreds and thousands of dollars...the fees are not ridiculous at all. Not all images are cheap royalty free images....many images are rights managed images that have specific one-time use licenses for certain purposes only. Fly-by-night and Fiverr based internet marketers do not set the stock image pricing structures, the photographers and the stock photo companies do.

#6 License cheap images from the legit microstock sites instead of using Getty's images without a license if you want decent quality images for less than the price of Getty's images. In-fact Getty owns a microstock site you can license cheaper images from.

#7 Getty is the biggest and considered by many to be the most reputable stock photo provider on the planet with revenue of around $900 million dollars last year. Getty was sold for 3.3 Billion dollars in 2012. If you are going to run with the big dogs, be prepared to pi$$ in the tall grass.

#8 If you pirate a $1000 image then be prepared to pay the $1000 price or triple that because you pirated the image instead of properly licensing the image.

#9 Invoicing a pirate for a stolen image is not extortion...it's called charging the pirate for the use of the image.

#10 Again, invoicing someone for a pirated image is NOT extortion...it's common practice. You steal something you pay for it and/or risk legal action.

#11 You don't get to steal television sets from your local Best Buy so don't think you can get away with stealing from Getty, you may just get caught.

#12 Getty has roughly 2000 employees and 150,000 photographers. Getty is doing their job by protecting the income and the livelihood of the photographers when they go after infringers.

#13 If you know how the image business works then you know Getty uses embedded data in the images and computer power to track down pirates on autopilot. Yes, sometimes the process may find an image that may not be be invoiceable and error is made. This is one of the reasons at the bottom of the letter they send they have verbiage that reads something like "If you believe you have received the letter in error or have questions please contact us at xxx-xxx-xxx or email at us at xxx@gettyimages". If you use feeds on your sites that pull in images then don't be too surprised if someone someday asks you where the content came from. If piracy of Getty's property was not so rampant they would not have had to resort to such measures.

#14 When you are a company as large as Getty and do almost a billion dollars a year in an 8 billion dollar a year visual content market you have a serious obligation to protect your digital assets. Billion dollar companies that deal in digital image assets will spend quite a bit of time and money on digital asset management and protection.

#15 You can rest assured that the fees they collect from image pirates is quite small in relation to the revenue they collect from upfront licensing fees. And let us not forget, the revenue they collect from pirates is money that should have been paid up front.

#16 Getty licenses 200,000 image per day. They have 70,000,000+ images online and 70 million more in their archive.

#17 Getty serves more than 1,000,000 paying customers.

#18 Getty made 35 million images free for bloggers to use and you should be thanking them for allowing you to use a library of 35,000,000 images for free.

#19 Getty has offices in 18 countries and US offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, McLean, VA, Madison, WI, New York, Seattle and Washington D.C. Getty Images has been publicly traded on both the NASDAQ and NYSE.

#20 If someone is dumb enough to use a pirated Getty image without being prepared to fight Getty on the use of that image then they need to be prepared to pay Getty for the image. If you purchase your stuff on Fiverr and/or similar sites then don't be surprised if Getty comes knocking on your door one day.

Getty has millions of images that can license for more that $1,000 each and Getty does not play games. If you were the library of choice for the BEST photographers in the world you not be playing games either. If you regularly pirate images or use so-called free images on the web that do not have a proper license from a legit image distributor then be prepared pay the price someday.

Again, Getty has made 35,000,000 professional images free for bloggers to use...most folks should be thanking them for their generosity.

Cheers

-don

Getty gave up scouring the Internet for their images and started a program where you embed the image in your content for free.