Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc., is a British-American visual media company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with an archive of over 200 million assets. It targets three markets—creative professionals, the media, and corporate.
Getty has distribution offices around the world and capitalizes on the Internet for distribution. As Getty has acquired other older photo agencies and archives, it has digitised their collections, enabling online distribution. Getty Images operates a large commercial website that clients use to search and browse for images, purchase usage rights, and download images. Image prices vary according to resolution and type of rights. The company also offers custom photo services for corporate clients.
History
In 1995, Mark Getty and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC in London. 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. The company relocated to Seattle two years later and expanded in the United States, reaching 2,000 employees by 2006. In April 2003, Getty Images entered into a partnership with Agence France-Presse to market each other's images.Getty Images acquired the Michael Ochs Archives in February 2007. The Michael Ochs Archives were described by The New York Times as "the premier source of musician photography in the world".
In 2008, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman acquired Getty Images for $2.4 billion. In 2012, H&F put Getty up for sale. As of the ensuing sale to Carlyle Group, the company was said to have an archive that included 80 million stills and illustrations. The company was acquired by the Getty family in 2018.
In 2015, Jonathan Klein became the company's chairman and Dawn Airey was hired as chief executive officer of Getty Images. The company moved to its current headquarters, in the Union Station office complex in Seattle's International District, in 2011.
In 2019, Getty Images introduced Market Freeze, simplifying exclusivity of rights-managed images. Later that year, it announced that due to customers' needs changing, it plans to phase out rights-managed imagery by 2020 in favor of royalty-free images.
Acquisitions
Since its formation, Getty Images has pursued an aggressive programme of acquisition, buying up many privately owned agencies that had built up the stock photography industry, from small family-run firms to larger agencies. By 1999, it had acquired one of the largest agencies, Tony Stone Images; the online art seller Art.com; the sports photography agency Allsport; the market leader in the Benelux and Scandinavia: Word View ; journalistic specialists Liaison Agency; Newsmakers the first digital news photo agency; Online USA, a specialist in celebrity shots; and the Hulton Press Library, the former archive of the British photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. The Hulton collection was sold by the BBC to Brian Deutsch in 1988, when it was renamed Hulton Deutsch. In 1996, the Hulton collection was sold on once more, this time purchased by Getty Images and renamed Hulton Getty. With the acquisition of the Hulton library, Getty Images took ownership of the rights to some 15 million photographs from the British press archives dating back to the Nineteenth Century. Hulton Getty also included photographs from the Keystone Collection, as well as images by notable photographers such as Bert Hardy, Bill Brandt, Weegee and Ernst Haas.Getty has branched out into stock audio, music and sound effects. And also video with the acquisition of EyeWire and Energy Film Library. Getty has partnered with other companies including Slidely for companies and advertisers to use the Getty Images video library of around 2 million videos.
In 2000, Getty acquired one of its main competitors, Archive Photos of New York, for US$183 million. The Archive Photos library was combined with the Hulton Getty collection to form a new subsidiary, Hulton Archive. Archive Photos had been formed in 1990 from the merger of Pictorial Parade and Frederick Lewis Stock Photos, two well-established US photo agencies. Their collections included archive images from The New York Times, Metronome and George Eastman House, and works by photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Anacleto Rapping, Deborah Feingold, Murray Garrett, Nat Fein and John Filo.
Further acquisitions followed, with the purchase in 2004 of image.net for US$20 million. On February 9, 2006, the microstock photo website iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images for US$50 million. In 2007, Getty successfully purchased its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207 million. The acquisition gave Getty Images control of WireImage, FilmMagic, and Contour Photos. Getty Images also acquired other subsidiaries, including Master Delegates, which includes Isifa Image Service in Prague and Laura Ronchi in Italy. In 2008, Getty purchased Redferns Music Picture Library, the music photo library built up by British jazz photographer David Redfern.
On October 23, 2008, Getty Images announced their intention to buy Jupitermedia's online images division, Jupiterimages, for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty. Jupitermedia, now trading as WebMediaBrands, continues its Internet publishing business, which they didn't sell to Getty Images.
On January 25, 2016, Corbis announced that it had sold its image licensing business, including the Corbis Images, Corbis Motion and Veer libraries and their associated assets, to Unity Glory, an affiliate of Visual China Group—Getty's exclusive distributor in China. Concurrently, it was announced that VCG would, after a transition period, license distribution and marketing of the Corbis library outside of China to Getty. Getty now manages Corbis's physical archives on behalf of VCG and Unity Glory.
Corporate ownership and management
In February 2008, it was announced that Getty Images would be acquired by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in a transaction valued at an estimated US$2.4 billion. On July 2, 2008, Getty Images announced the completion of its acquisition. Getty Images common stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of the acquisition and was delisted from the NYSE.In 2012, H&F engaged investment bankers to sell the company. While a price of $4 billion was initially discussed, in August when the private equity firm Carlyle Group emerged as the likely acquirer, the price under consideration was said to be $3.3–3.4 billion. CVC Capital Partners Ltd. was also said to have been bidding but had yet to top Carlyle's price. The sale to Carlyle thereafter was announced at $3.3 billion, with co-founders Getty and Klein and the Getty family all carrying their investments over into the new ownership structure. Getty continues to serve as chairman and Klein as chief executive.
In September 2018, the Getty family announced it would acquire majority stake in the company from Carlyle Group.
Copyright enforcement and controversy
Beginning in 2008, Getty Images has created controversy for its methods of pursuing copyright enforcement on behalf of its photographers. Rather than pursue a policy of sending "cease and desist" notices, Getty typically mails a demand letter that claims substantial monetary damages from owners of websites it believes infringed on their photographers' copyrights. Getty commonly tries to intimidate website owners by sending collection agents, even though a demand letter does not create a debt.One photographer noted, "Courts don't like to be used as a means of extortion." In one case, Getty sent a church in Lichfield, Staffordshire, a £6,000 bill for photographs it used on its website, apparently placed there by a church volunteer. In this case, the church offered to pay Getty what it thought was a reasonable amount. The diocese's communications director said:
Getty was not playing ball or following the normal litigation or dispute resolution procedures and to ignore them. We don't deal with bullies; we deal with legal threats appropriately. I told by letter that's what doing, that we were not going to play, and didn't hear any more.
The Guardian described other instances in which Getty or other stock photo businesses dropped a claim when a website owner refused to pay and hired a lawyer. A law firm was quoted as saying: "Once we get involved generally Getty does back off."
In 2009, Oscar Michelen, a New York attorney who focuses on such damages claims, said: "The damages they're requesting aren't equal to the copyright infringement," and "there's no law that says definitively what images are worth in the digital age." He called Getty's effort to assess four-figure fines "a legalized form of extortion".
In an effort to combat online copyright infringement, in March 2014 Getty Images made over 35 million images available free for non-commercial online use via embedding with attribution and a link back to the Getty Images website. According to Getty Images executive Craig Peters, "The principle is to turn what's infringing use with good intentions, turning that into something that's valid licensed use with some benefits going back to the photographer".
On February 15, 2018, Google Images' interface was modified in order to meet the terms of a settlement and licensing partnership with Getty. The "View image" button was removed from image thumbnails. This change is intended to discourage users from directly viewing the full-sized image, and encourage them to view the image in its appropriate context on its respective web page. The "Search by image" button has also been downplayed, as reverse image search can be used to find higher-resolution copies of copyrighted images. Google also agreed to make the copyright disclaimer within the interface more prominent.
Copyright infringement lawsuits
In 2009, Car-Freshner Corp., makers of Little Trees, filed a lawsuit against Getty Images in U.S. Federal Court, Northern District New York. Car-Freshner claimed that Getty Images had in its catalog photos that included the famous "tree-shaped" trademarked car fresheners. In 2011, Getty Images attempted to have the case dismissed by Jm Antolin, but its motion was denied. In 2012, Getty Images agreed to settle by paying $100,000 to Car-Freshener Corp., but admitted no wrongdoing.In September 2013, Avril Nolan brought a $450,000 suit against Getty Images. Nolan alleged that Getty Images improperly let her image be used in advertisements that depicted her as HIV-positive. She claimed the ad's depiction of her as HIV-positive hurt her personal and professional relationships and caused her emotional distress. In March 2014 a judge ruled the lawsuit will be taken to court rather than dismissed. Getty Images settled with Nolan in January 2015.
In November 2013, Getty and Agence France-Presse were ordered to pay $1.2 million compensation to freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel for using his images posted on Twitter related to the 2010 Haiti earthquake without his permission, in violation of copyright and Twitter's terms of service.
In July 2016, Getty was sued, unsuccessfully, for over $1 billion by Carol Highsmith, an American photographer notable for donating her 100,000+ image collection, royalty-free, to the Library of Congress, when Highsmith found that Getty has been selling unauthorized licenses of her work. Carol Highsmith found out about this when she received a letter from a law firm representing Getty demanding $120 for displaying her pictures on a personal website of hers.
In August 2016, Zuma Press, an independent press agency, filed suit against Getty for alleged copyright violations and unauthorized licensing of more than 47,000 images.