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Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, has made vast swathes of its library free
to use, in an effort to combat piracy. Millions of images - including famous shots
of Marilyn Monroe and Barack Obama - will now be available without cost to blogs and
social media sites. The photos will be "framed" with a code that
links back to Getty's website. Getty said it had made the move after realising
thousands of its images were being used without attribution.
"Our content was everywhere already," said Craig Peters, a business development executive
at the Seattle-based company. "If you want to get a Getty image today, you
can find it without a watermark very simply," he added.
"The way you do that is you go to one of our customer sites and you right-click. Or you
go to Google Image search or Bing Image Search and you get it there. And that's what's happening."
The company says it is making up to 35 million photos available through the new "embed tool",
and images can also be shared on social media sites Twitter and Tumblr.
Users can choose from sports events, fashion shows, stock images and celebrity gatherings
like the Oscars and the Brit Awards. However, there are some notable exceptions
- primarily editorial photos of events such as the 11 September terrorist attacks on America
or the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In essence, it is admitting defeat. By offering
the ability to embed photos, Getty is saying it cannot effectively police the use of its
images in every nook and cranny of the internet. Its code, which can be cut and pasted onto
any website, is similar to the tool YouTube provides for sharing its videos. Images cannot
be resized and they will all incorporate a Getty Images logo, as well as a credit for
the photographer. Like YouTube, the company may use the code
to serve advertisements in the future, allowing it to make revenue by sharing its catalogue.