Getty Images Suing Website Owners
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If I didn’t see the correspondence myself, I probably would not have believed it. Yes, Getty Images is suing website owners for using their images supposedly without paying for the rights. They have a software that crawls webpages, using an algorithm it can detect Getty images even if they have been cropped, or otherwise slightly altered. The images need not have the Getty watermark to be detected. That’s fine so they find people using their images and then send them a cease and desist letter, right? No they are demanding upwards of 20 times the original image price, threatening legal action. For this reason I will never use Getty Images and
will continue to use iStockPhoto. Turns out that Getty acquired iStock photo… Anyone have other suggestions on who to use for low-cost stock photos?
Here is an interesting website devoted to the topic: Getty Extortion Letter