[HN Gopher] Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge
___________________________________________________________________
Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge
Author : sexy_seedbox
Score : 154 points
Date : 2025-01-07 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.gettyimages.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.gettyimages.com)
| sexy_seedbox wrote:
| Feels like Getty has acquired all their big competitors.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Is this a defensive move, against AI taking over the stock
| image market?
| elpocko wrote:
| Both of them already provide AI image generation themselves.
|
| https://www.shutterstock.com/ai-image-generator
|
| https://www.gettyimages.com/ai/generation/about
| Raed667 wrote:
| if you're going to get scraped anyway, might as well get
| paid
| animuchan wrote:
| Not sure it'll help against AI eventually taking over. They
| can't compete on price, and the quality ceiling for "generic
| corporate announcement picture of diverse people smiling" is
| very reachable for the current gen AI.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just don't show the hands of those people
| blitzar wrote:
| The defensive move here is the sellers cashing out while they
| still have a decent valuation and taking their money
| elsewhere.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would also consider consolidation as move to cut costs. If
| there is no more growth or it is taken by AI, that is the
| next step to get line go up.
| vintermann wrote:
| Probably the plan is to sue big, and convince investors
| that's going to work.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've been a Shutterstock member for years (not a big user, but I
| always like to make sure my blog posting images are legit, and SS
| has been good for that).
|
| Hope that it doesn't change much for me.
|
| Otherwise, I'm sure it will be OK.
|
| Can't help but feel that this is a response to some of the AI
| image generation stuff.
| schappim wrote:
| Just think of all the re-watermarking that will have to take
| place!
| DannyBee wrote:
| I hope they call the merged company "gutterstock"
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| shutty !
| lioeters wrote:
| Shetty Images
| dotdi wrote:
| Whenever I wanted to buy stock images, I was shocked how
| expensive they were. I usually didn't intend to use them straight
| up commercially, but I felt like I should pay for somebodies work
| to produce these images. The prices were too steep though.
|
| Unsplash was a God-sent. High quality images with only
| attribution requirements, which I was happy to give anyways. But
| Unsplash was bought by Shutterstock and became "kinda free" with
| the good stuff being paywalled. And now Shutterstock merges with
| Getty, two of the biggest players in the space.
|
| Frankly, I am quite convinced this is bad for end-users. The
| space is already enshittified by all the AI junk. So I fully
| expect quality to go down and prices to go up after this merger.
| muhehe wrote:
| > Whenever I wanted to buy stock images, I was shocked how
| expensive they were.
|
| It's funny, because authors of those images (at least on
| Shutterstock) get basically nothing (like ten cents for photo,
| iirc).
| Aachen wrote:
| So how do we fix it? Better search/aggregator engine and
| unified payment scheme, but photographers get the money
| directly and simply pay 1 cent per purchase that came via the
| aggregator, rather than having to sign away their rights and
| getting pennies from a centralized platform?
|
| Wondering if photographers can't already do this with regular
| search engine's image search, which (speaking for myself) is
| what I use when looking for usable images anyway. It often
| lands me on something like shutterstock but it's almost
| always too expensive, annoying to pay, or badly licensed. If
| they support common payment methods from around the world,
| anyone can buy unwatermarked versions for a dollar and the
| photographer gets 100%. I guess the downside is having to
| have a website of your own? Many photographers already have
| this anyway though
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| It's crazy after all this time we still don't have low
| friction small transaction capability on the western
| world's web. When I was in China way back in 2014 it seemed
| like they had an ability to this person to person from your
| phone, so why can't we get it for the web?
|
| Maybe there's enough out of work developers someone can go
| after this seemingly low value but wished for since forever
| payment space.
| Aachen wrote:
| I don't mind transferring euros to a bank account, it's
| more about american systems doing fraud detection and
| deciding I can't pay with a german address and a dutch
| bank account (stripe illegally
| (https://www.acceptmyiban.org) rejects that for example,
| can't pay for DeepL...; or paying for food with a german
| credit card and Dutch IP because my mobile data routes
| through NL, also gets rejected), german credit scoring
| being mandatory to force a "pay later" scheme on you when
| you just want to pay up front (involves either phishing
| you or validating your phone number), paypal simply
| having a broken UI that goes "something went wrong", etc.
|
| Everyone with a bank account can transfer money online,
| merchants just need to accept it and not try to use dumb
| schemes that charge extra fees on top of the bank fees to
| "support more payment methods", that's my problem...
| horsebridge wrote:
| Stock images only have okay pricing (per image) if you use some
| sort of decently sized subscription. Anyone that only needs a
| few images are unfortunately screwed.
| fratlas wrote:
| Pexels is still very free, and seems to be high quality.
| Ekaros wrote:
| No anti-trust here? Seems like their market share might be too
| unreasonable to me.
| DannyBee wrote:
| In the US this would not be enough - at a minimum, you'd have
| to show actual harm, like, for example, showing it has caused
| (or is very very likely to cause) higher prices for folks.
|
| I don't know enough about stock images to say for sure, but a
| cursory glance suggests Getty has not been raising prices
| outside of the norm over time.
|
| It would be a very hard case to win without a bunch of
| unfavorable data.
| martin_a wrote:
| I think Getty, Shutterstock and Adobe Stock are _the_ stock
| image agencies. If two of them merge, wouldn't that be enough
| for a "market dominating position" and therefore enough to
| get somebody involved?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The FTC is a political organization led by political
| appointees who mirror the politics of those who appoint
| them.. I think 2 years ago this would've attracted
| regulatory scrutiny, I don't think it will as of Jan 20th.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| > at a minimum, you'd have to show actual harm, like, for
| example, showing it has caused (or is very very likely to
| cause) higher prices for folks.
|
| I'm sure that's the legal criteria, but why do I get a
| feeling of "time to move along" when I use a product of one
| of the merged companies? Every telecom merger, every food or
| book publisher merger, every aerospace company merger, has
| passed the review you state, but very shortly products are no
| longer made, services are ramped down, quality degrades.
|
| As an employee, I've been through mergers as well, the merged
| company always sucks more than the original. Sometimes for
| trivial reasons (CXOs chose the worse of the two time card
| systems), sometimes for a multitude of reasons.
|
| As a consumer and worker, I have acquired a reflexive
| suspicion and dislike of mergers.
| SilasX wrote:
| I know it's not entirely in keeping with the spirit of this
| site, but there's a part of me that really wants to snark,
|
| "Oh no! We might no longer have meaningful competition for
| random-ass, dumbed-down, emotionally manipulative pictures to
| add to news articles! So next time you read an ad-bloated
| article about prices going up, they might not be able to afford
| to include a picture of an average Jane pushing a shopping
| cart! Truly, a loss to us all!"
|
| Edit: Maddox's classic take on annoyance with stock images:
|
| http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos
| Clubber wrote:
| Layoffs coming. The government needs to grow a spine and halt
| about 90% of these M&A's.
| paxys wrote:
| The current government did exactly that, and we voted them out.
| Clubber wrote:
| The current government is still the current government. Not
| sure how that applies here.
| paxys wrote:
| For the next 13 days. It is a lame duck government.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| What, you don't think a functional societal financial system
| can be based solely on M&A's and corporate loans taken out for
| stock buybacks?
| cloudking wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I haven't bought a stock image since Stable
| Diffusion was released.
|
| Edit: with Flux, you can't even tell the difference:
| https://blackforestlabs.ai/
| Etheryte wrote:
| There are plenty of businesses that think the same way and
| every time I see an ad with an image that's clearly AI-
| generated I steer clear of it. It looks cheap, hits the uncanny
| valley and is often a good sign of lowest effort possible.
| infecto wrote:
| I am in the same boat, photos are here to stay at least in
| the short to medium term. It will most definitely change as
| we get better and better models that become photo realistic.
| I keep seeing the same themed AI generated images in tech
| blogs and it is tiresome, its just like how meme images were
| constantly used in writeups a decade ago.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Photo ofc will not be replaced
|
| Photo is an image but also a record. The fact something
| really did exist and captured is probably more valuable
| than ever.
|
| So wedding/event photographer really don't have to worry
| about lose their job to AI
|
| But in places where photo, as an image just to express
| abstract idea, without concerning where and when it
| happened, then that part of value goes to AI already
| cma wrote:
| I doubt you'll be able to easily tell from the outputs of
| frontier models for most stock image usages by the time this
| merger is approved.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| "I can't afford real images of real people and can't tell
| these images are shit, but you can rest assured that I didn't
| take any short cuts on the product!"
| cloudking wrote:
| I can afford them, I just don't need to anymore. My use
| cases for stock photos are websites, marketing, landing
| pages etc. The SOTA image models are sufficient for my use
| cases and my customers don't care. Infact, they are happy
| with the quality of AI generated stock photos and
| appreciate the fast turnaround and lower cost.
| SoKamil wrote:
| Which models are SOTA as of now?
| cloudking wrote:
| In terms of realism, Flux is leading the pack currently
| turnsout wrote:
| Over Midjourney?
| cloudking wrote:
| Yeah, Midjourney tends to create sci-fi/enhanced looking
| humans. Flux creates photorealistic.
| vintermann wrote:
| Real images of real people, although slightly
| unrealistically racially diverse and _very_ unrealistically
| attractive, and absolutely not working for the company they
| 're standing around a laptop for... is that really any
| better? Look at us, we're so serious we can licence
| shutterstock garbage?
| maeil wrote:
| I swear Microsoft is half the market for this. I can't
| remember the last time I saw them for an image which did
| not give off that exact vibe in over a decade.
|
| It's pure slop, of the non-AI kind.
| aloisdg wrote:
| Until when?
| vintermann wrote:
| Well I'm grateful for it. Because now corporate stock photos
| remind me of AI images, and I can properly appreciate that
| those are signs of low effort junk too.
| vidarh wrote:
| Survivor bias. In that, you're reacting only to the images
| you assume are AI. It could be you're really good at spotting
| them, or they're really bad. But it could also be you spot a
| tiny proportion, or even misidentify real images as AI.
| Without knowing the real rate, it tells us nothing about
| whether picking AI images over stock images is a good
| tradeoff or not.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who purchased stock images via our content team
| there were a ton of really schlocky stock images 10+ years
| ago and probably longer that I might be inclined to dismiss
| as AI-generated today.
| devin wrote:
| Oh, please. I've generated many, many images. They are not
| hard to spot.
| jnwatson wrote:
| The bad ones are of course not hard to spot. The good
| ones you'll never notice.
| devin wrote:
| Good ones /of what/?
|
| Are we talking a human subject? Nature?
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Much respect, but nowadays, unless the person put
| basically zero effort to make it look realistic, there's
| no way you can detect whether an image is AI or not while
| quick scrolling. Obviously, if you look at every image as
| "let me examine every part of it to see if it's AI or
| not" mindset, you can still spot them. But anyone who
| spent a few days playing with the latest gen models, can
| create images that pass the 90% of sniff tests.
| devin wrote:
| Do you have a test you like? I just took one at
| https://sightengine.com/ai-or-not?version=2024Q3 and got
| 18/20 correct, and I'm not zooming in on details or
| anything, I'm just using some basic discrimination based
| on what I've generated and seen generated in the past.
|
| I would do even better at this if we limited it to
| pictures of "realistic" settings.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I think we might be talking about two distinct cases. If
| you're actively thinking whether an image is AI or not,
| you're already biased to it potentially being AI-
| generated. That improves your recognition of slop-
| finding. As I mentioned, I definitely agree how it's
| fairly straightforward to spot the slop if you're looking
| for it.
|
| I'm not even sure how we could implement a real-life test
| without bias. Maybe if there was a complete feed of your
| internet browsing, where it asks you at the end of the
| day "ballpark the % of media that you think was AI?".
| Then go through the entire feed, and scrutinize it one by
| one.
| devin wrote:
| Right, and even there I think we might need to get
| specific about categories of images. Images that are
| supposed to be photo realistic are far easier to spot
| than "battleship in outer space" generations.
|
| Bringing it back to the topic of stock photography: A
| large percentage of stock photos are of real things,
| people, scenery. So, when someone says I'll have a hard
| time spotting generated stock photos, I kinda go uhh,
| well, no, not generally, because stock photos are very
| often of people and real life scenes, the thing that is
| the easiest to spot as a generation.
| vidarh wrote:
| Has anyone said you will have a hard time spotting them?
| Because I did not. I pointed out that when you say you
| can, it is an instance of survivor bias, and it is,
| _whether you are good or bad at it_ as long as we don 't
| have data to tell whether your assumptions were correct.
|
| We still don't know whether or not you're good or bad at
| picking out AI images used in actual campaigns, because
| we have every reason to assume at least a reasonable
| proportion of AI images used in actual ads will have been
| through an editorial process that'd rule out a lot of the
| easily recognized shlock, and so a test that does not use
| images that have been through the same selection process
| is meaningless.
|
| I have no doubt you can recognize some. You may well be
| able to recognize all of them perfectly for what I know.
| The point was _not_ to argue you can 't, but that your
| impression can't reliably tell you, because you'd be
| likely to think the same whether your accuracy is high or
| low.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure why you're discrediting the
| advancement of realism. I'm very sorry, but I have a hard
| to believe that when you scroll through IG and see
| something like this -- https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/c
| omments/1hvdhie/this_girl_... , you'll think it's AI
| instantly. Unless, again, you're consciously examining
| whether every single piece of media is AI generated or
| not.
| vidarh wrote:
| You've already indicated elsewhere that in a test of
| images that had not been edited, or selected to minimize
| the risk of detection, you as someone who has spent lots
| of time generating AI images got 2 out of 20 wrong. So
| clearly it's possible to fool you.
|
| How many more do you think would get past you if the
| person running the hypothetical campaign was someone with
| a similar experience at picking images to you spending
| the same amount of time they would picking stock
| photography on ruling out any picture that looks like
| it's AI-generated to them, or editing them to remove
| things that'd tip you off?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| The major thing that's happened to me, is I start doubting
| every image I see in an ad. If it looks too generic, too
| plain. If I have a negative perception of the company, I
| start to think it's an AI image and further entrench my
| negative opinion of the company.
|
| Maybe it's not rational. Maybe I can't tell the truly good AI
| images form the cheap slop ones. But that's how I feel, and
| ultimately a lot of commerce runs off customer feelings. The
| faker, cheaper, and more soulless we feel a company is being,
| especially in marketing, the more negative perception we have
| of them. That's just me though
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| While I also have a distaste for AI stock photos, their
| crappiness just highlights the fact that a stock photo
| already meant "This article does not need a picture to
| communicate anything, but I know that articles with a picture
| perform better than articles without, so I will exert the
| least possible effort and expense to add a picture to this
| article".
|
| It's just that now there's an even cheaper way to do that.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Stock photos always looked cheap anyway.
|
| Both low talent AI use and stock photos have their own look
| about them and neither is premium.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I think half of the YouTube thumbnails now are AI generated.
|
| Frankly speaking they are getting so good I can hardly tell
| by first glance
| bambax wrote:
| I'm a small-time Shutterstock contributor and my best sellers
| are all news-style images from actual events. (For example,
| when announcing a future conference, a publication often likes
| to illustrate the article with images from the previous
| iteration). While possible, those are more difficult to
| reproduce with AI.
|
| Shutterstock used to have a program called "Red Carpet" where
| they endorsed independent photographers to help us get in to
| events as press. Then like all good things, it was shut down,
| no explanation given. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| ghaff wrote:
| An organization whose events I attend regularly has a
| photographer, who I assume is not on staff but seems to be
| their regular photographer, and they use a lot of their work
| to populate upcoming conferences and the like.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| The "ee" in "Coffee" is a different shape, the tie of the no-
| longer-in-a-suit guy changes style midway and the pockets of
| the woman for the depth example don't match.
|
| I'll agree that people who don't care about sewing and
| calligraphy probably won't notice, but there's a difference
| between "you can't even tell" and "you can't even tell as long
| as you don't care too much about the result".
| mplewis wrote:
| If you think people can't tell when you've cheaped out on them,
| you're the sucker.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| The prices of photos sold by those services are insanely high.
|
| Those businesses would be much more profitable if they lowered
| their prices significantly, but I guess the greed overshadowed
| their mind.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| You're right and wrong.
|
| While they're very expensive to me in my everyday life, they
| were originally 10x cheaper than the alternative: getting
| custom photography done for ads, websites, brochures, etc.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The prices of photos sold by those services are insanely
| high.
|
| That's because private citizens are not the target group of
| Getty, Shutterstock etc. - the target group are newspapers, TV
| stations, high-profile/fulltime YouTubers and media/advertising
| agencies. They all have these expensive stock photo licenses
| because that's cheaper than hiring dedicated photographers.
|
| Whatever shot you want - unless it's of _your product_ or you
| have very specific artistic needs, chances are very high one of
| the stock photo services (either Getty, one of the large press
| agencies such as AP or local /industry specific services like
| Imago that specialises in sports) will have whatever shot you
| need. And that kind of database access is not cheap to start.
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. There's no way you can provide meaningful compensation
| for photographers/artists from a target market of need some
| fairly random image/graphic for a blog post. But
| photographers on staff are expensive.
|
| And even as it is, a lot of us who toyed with submitting to
| microstock for a bit mostly gave up. They don't even want a
| lot of nature/flower/landscape photography and once you've
| got pictures of people, you need to faff with model releases
| and the like--and you still don't even make beer money.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| The axis of stock photography
| righthand wrote:
| Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock
| photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining
| exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos,
| etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily
| displace them as they haven't done anything with their companies
| but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset
| companies in the last decade.
|
| Shutterstock usually acquires companies in the winter and lays
| them off in the spring and fall to boost their stock price.
|
| There is no innovation at the company, just a set of long time
| engineers and their niche microservice and a rotating door of
| C-suite looking to collect a bonus from operating capital from
| layoffs. I do not see anything that actually benefits them being
| a publicly traded corporation or reasons they deliver actual
| shareholder value, but they soldier on.
|
| - a former Shutterstock employee
| dpflan wrote:
| Can you elaborate what is needed to compete and displace?
| righthand wrote:
| - a stock photography collection to make your site seem full
| of content
|
| - organize the labor to shoot photography and video around
| editorial content and empower them to sell their own assets
| with tooling
|
| - as an indexer you only take a 30% which is much lower than
| the aggressive everyone loses shutterstock-getty cut
|
| ------
|
| Personally I imagine a decentralized approach where
| contributors host the content or purchase hosting space from
| the indexer. The indexer just provides a search platform.
| Transparent costs will keep people at your doorstep and
| maintain exclusivity.
|
| It is important to understand that Shutterstock does not sell
| assets, they sell the licenses to use the assets.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| This is misguided.
|
| First, you can't "organize labor" to take an iconic photo
| of a shuttle landing that happened 30 years ago. That is,
| there is enormous value in their existing library.
|
| Second, decentralized photography is called Instagram, yet
| those photos aren't worth anything. Instagram has no
| interest in licensing them. Instead, they monetize around
| the photo (engagement) and not the photo itself. The real
| value has been in the content produced by professional
| photojournalists.
|
| Whether Getty/Shutterstock is a good business is a
| different topic. They've been around for a long time,
| despite your claim they are "easily disrupted." You both
| underestimate the value of indexing (distribution) and
| mislabel them as being merely an indexer (they protect
| rights, organize deals, bundle and package, centralize
| relationships, to name a few).
| righthand wrote:
| I never claimed they were an indexer, I claimed that is
| how a company to displace them would work. Everything
| you're telling me is misguided is a misinterpretation
| about my claims of a non-existent competitor. Your
| interpretation of my response is misguided.
|
| You don't need a back catalog for a 30 year old photo of
| a shuttle launch, that wouldn't sell to recent news
| outfits looking for latest editorial content.
|
| The fact that Shutterstock has spent the last decade
| switching from php to react to nextjs and only acquiring
| their competitors is more than enough evidence they are
| easily displaced. The only thing your competitor has to
| do differently is not sell out to Shutterstock.
| SilasX wrote:
| >Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock
| photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from
| maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news
| photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets.
|
| How are you not counting that as "making money from their stock
| photography catalog"?
| righthand wrote:
| If you remove the editorial arm, revenue would crater from
| only selling generalized stock photography.
| SilasX wrote:
| Okay then there are better ways to phrase that distinction,
| because what you've described is still "licensing stock
| photography". The editorial arm is just a means by which
| they license.
| grouchomarx wrote:
| editorial and stock are two different categories and not
| the same thing
| righthand wrote:
| You can license editorial content (President Biden waving
| from the White House) or stock content (business man
| waving from the lawn of his house) for an editorial news
| piece. Editorial content refers to media assets of
| latest/trending events, not content for editorials
| written by press.
| paxys wrote:
| You can't innovate your way out of basic economics. The value
| of a photograph has continued to decline year after year to the
| point where it is now ~$0. The licensing revenue pie is getting
| smaller and smaller, and so companies in the space have been
| shrinking and consolidating to adapt to it. That's all there is
| to it.
| righthand wrote:
| Shutterstock doesn't sell digital assets, they sell the
| license to use assets. The value of a stock photograph for
| marketing has decreased YoY, but the value of the license to
| use that photograph has only gone up. The consolidation is a
| trick they play on shareholders to convince them they are
| gaining value through assets, even though the value of assets
| is $0.
|
| That is why a good portion of their earnings calls are about
| miscellaneous vague initiatives defined as an acronym and how
| much they saved on operating capital through acquisitions and
| layoffs.
|
| The only way to increase the value of a license is with
| exclusivity. In which case the only remaining innovation is
| to direct the value back to the contributor. Which in turn
| would shrink the company.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I'd argue that the value of a photograph is not $0. The
| problem is rather that its actual value is lower than the
| $200 that Getty wants for a 3MP picture of a hamburger.
|
| I've been in projects where we cleared the rights for every
| picture, and it's always the same: either we blow the budget
| on two pictures with strong usage restrictions or we replace
| them all with CC alternatives.
|
| Perhaps photographs need their Steam moment.
| ChrisNorstrom wrote:
| TLDR; Just use http://www.unsplash.com for free
| professional photos.
|
| 100% agree. Years ago I signed up for Getty images
| (royality based) back when they were competing with Fotolia
| (royalty free) before they were bought by Adobe, and
| actually clicked through the shopping cart to see how much
| it would be to license a picture of some nice autumn leaves
| for a billboard or a calendar. It was an insane amount in
| the hundreds of dollars, and it was time limited, and only
| for a limited run (if you used them for example, a
| calendar), the usage rights were insane. And if you wanted
| the full resolution it was something like $1,000+ dollars.
| Our minds were boggled. We honestly legitamately thought
| Getty images was some kind of money laundering operation.
| It was cheaper to hire a photographer to get the pictures
| you want, rather than license them from Getty.
|
| Yes they have some nice rare photographs of political
| events (wars, earthquake response, important cultural news
| photos) but they are insane for thinking their entire
| catalog is deserving of royalties and time/run limitations.
| The only thing Getty did was convince me that copyright
| needs to be heavily reformed. (The photographer isn't
| paying royalties to all the people who made the objects in
| the photo, yet they're asking for royalities just for
| taking the photo)
| yabatopia wrote:
| Unsplash is part of Getty Images.
|
| From 2021: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634113)
| paxys wrote:
| > It was cheaper to hire a photographer to get the
| pictures you want, rather than license them from Getty.
|
| And how much time would that take? People who are using
| these services need the photo NOW, and paying a few
| hundred dollars for licensing is perfectly acceptable for
| companies when the alternative is missing a publishing
| deadline or accidentally infringing on someone's
| copyright.
| miki123211 wrote:
| This is called "panorama rights" and is actually how it
| works in some countries.
|
| In e.g. Italy, one is not allowed to take photos of
| (new?) buildings without the architect's consent, as far
| as I'm aware.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Do you believe if their prices were half, they would sell
| twice as many?
| ActionHank wrote:
| So basically Getty Image layoffs announced today?
| righthand wrote:
| Effective in 3-9 months. Today is about pretending the
| company is growing with employees.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Your first sentence is self-contradictory. They are making
| money from their stock photos/images/videos. By charging fees
| for usage.
| righthand wrote:
| Okay you go work there and write a better sentence on how the
| money is made.
| rvz wrote:
| > There is no innovation at the company, just a set of long
| time engineers and their niche microservice and a rotating door
| of C-suite looking to collect a bonus from operating capital
| from layoffs. I do not see anything that actually benefits them
| being a publicly traded corporation or reasons they deliver
| actual shareholder value, but they soldier on.
|
| They don't care.
|
| > I do not see anything that actually benefits them being a
| publicly traded corporation or reasons they deliver actual
| shareholder value, but they soldier on.
|
| Well they should have already known that OpenAI (and others)
| have license agreements directly from Shutterstock to train AI
| models such as DALL-E 3 (or DALL-E 4) and that is of interest
| to Getty to own the rights to the images.
|
| Stability AI has close to no choice but to settle their lawsuit
| against them.
| denysvitali wrote:
| They also make money by chasing down people who use their
| images without paying a license (fair) by "extortion".
|
| Once my co-founder used an image downloaded from Google (bad!)
| for the company website, GettyImages noticed that and
| threatened our company to legal actions (C&D) unless we pay the
| price of the license for the stock image, which magically
| became "premium" (or whatever their top tier is) for the
| occasion.
|
| They're for sure right in making you pay in case you're
| illegitimately using their images without a license (totally
| fair IMHO), but the way they do it is very shady.
| Gud wrote:
| Sorry I don't understand, how are they the bad guy in your
| scenario?
|
| Presumably an online business should follow copyright law?
| blahyawnblah wrote:
| They're not saying they're the bad guys
| Gud wrote:
| "shady"
| crtasm wrote:
| They seem to be claiming the image in this case got
| bumped up to the highest price tier only because there
| was a C&D notice.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Exactly - the price of that particular image switched to
| a higher tier just because they found a copyright
| infringement. This is the shady part. Back then I recall
| reading other threads about people in very similar
| situations. Unfortunately I'm not able to find those
| threads anymore, but I've found a Reddit post mentioning
| that Getty stopped with these shady practices when their
| CEO changed.
|
| Edit: found something similar to what I mean [1], [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archive
| s/625-De...
|
| [2]: https://ryanhealy.com/getty-images-extortion-letter/
| dmurray wrote:
| You could think of it as, it was bumped up to a higher
| tier because there is evidence that out of all their
| millions of stock photos, someone chose this one.
| denysvitali wrote:
| That would make sense if this was done _after_ they
| estimate the infringement price that they present in the
| C&D - which AFAIK wasn't the case
| denysvitali wrote:
| Yes, they're not the bad guys for making people respect
| their copyright (there have also been cases where Getty re-
| licensed public domain images and threatened people in
| similar ways, but that's a different matter).
|
| Assuming they're the legitimate copyright holders, the
| shady part is increasing the price of the image on their
| website to make you pay more than what you should as soon
| as they notice the infringement - and threatening legal
| actions if you don't pay the image price
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| How are they suppose to do that without coming across shady?
| denysvitali wrote:
| The shady part is the part where the price of the image
| magically increases (on their website) as soon as they
| detect a copyright infringement, so that they can get even
| more money from you.
|
| All in all, as stated in the original comment, I believe
| it's in their right to do so (because the copyright
| infringement happened), but they take advantage of this in
| a shady / scammy way
| smugma wrote:
| That doesn't seem shady. If you park in a meter, it may
| cost $3/hr. If you forget to pay the meter, the ticket
| may be $100. It needs to be more or it never makes sense
| to feed the meter.
| harrall wrote:
| Why do they need innovation? They just have a product that
| works, like a company that makes nails. Is there much for a
| nail company to innovate all the time?
|
| It's a boring job that has been long figured out.
|
| Sure, they can diversify by adding other services, just like
| how a nail company could start making screws, but that's not
| really innovation... that's just doing something else
| altogether. Should Getty diversify? Maybe, but it would be more
| for their own survival than actually making their core product
| better.
|
| If you are looking for a job that has innovation, you apply in
| an industry that still has places to go. You can't work for a
| nail-making company and then complain that they aren't re-
| inventing the world.
| raincole wrote:
| Stock image looks like a dead business walking to me. If the
| specific use case isn't important enough to hire an artist for
| it, I might just use SD.
| bambax wrote:
| I've been a (small time) Shutterstock contributor for over 10
| years. You'd think they'd send a mail to the people producing the
| images to announce something like this, instead of waiting for
| them learning about it in the press.
|
| You'd be wrong.
| righthand wrote:
| The company isn't organized to do that. It's a handful of 40
| year olds holding a carrot on a stick in front of 20-30 year
| olds. The leadership doesn't actually direct any product
| development so it's just meetings and chaos.
| paxys wrote:
| They are both public companies. They cannot tell you the news
| privately before a broad announcement.
| anonstock wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better most employees learned about it
| in the press as well.
|
| Like sibling commenter paxys says public companies have to
| avoid any insider trading/market manipulation entanglements.
| oldgregg wrote:
| Somebody should just scrape all the most popular images from
| getty then setup a pipeline to regenerate them with
| flux/controlnet/loras. Charge $10/mo for unlimited licensing or
| find ancillary way to generate revenue. If most of revenue comes
| from editorial images start there-- most people won't even care
| if it's a bit off.
| nojvek wrote:
| Ghutterstock has plenty of $$$ to make a lawsuit. If the image
| catalog is close enough, that is a copyright violation.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| The new company to be called... Ghutter Stock?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I have always held Getty at a much higher level than
| Shutterstock. I find this a bit sad.
| paxys wrote:
| Shares of Getty and Shutterstock have been down 36% and 22%
| respectively in the last year, in a market that went up by 25% in
| the same period. It is obvious that neither company has a
| sustainable business model anymore. Whether they can combine and
| turn things around though remains to be seen.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Does this relate to the 'copyright for ML training' lawsuits at
| all? Is the merged consent better able to fight, better able to
| argue for steeper compensation/remuneration?
| josefritzishere wrote:
| not an anti-trust problem?
| rvz wrote:
| Stability AI just has little to no chance in winning that lawsuit
| against them and almost certainly has to settle with Getty.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Worrying times for the dead weight in Shutterstock I'm sure!
|
| A friend of mine works in their European HQ in Dublin and told me
| that their AI leadership are basically missing, leaving the
| office leaderless in favor of promoting themselves at tech
| conferences.
|
| Hopefully Getty makes the necessary changes, because there are
| lots of good engineers in Shutterstock beholden to lots of bad
| management.
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