I expect that quite many artists will not want to cooperate with scammers.
Some people will deactivate their portfolios on Getty-owned sites.

How about setting up a website showcasing the work of artists and designers not cooperating with Getty? Getty-free network?

Here is what I have in mind:

1. The landing page would describe the current scam as the background for this initiative. The main argument why the buyers / designers should not buy from Getty is that their client may find the nice image for which they charged  him $150 in some stupid free collection. For some people this may be deadly.

2. Three kinds of members:

- Contributors not submitting to Getty sites

- Buyers / design agencies not buying from Getty sites

- Stock agencies not entering any distribution deals with Getty sites. Stock agencies would pay small fees to be listed which would cover the setup, domain and hosting costs for the maintainer.

3. Each member�s entry there would take the full width of the screen and be let�s say 150-200 pixels high. The contributor would shortly present their niche (lifestyle, travel, illustrations, etc.), thumbnails of 3-5 popular images with links to where they can be bought.  Also one featured image which on mouseover would display a higher resolution with a watermark saying: �This image is not available at Getty, iStock, Thinkstock etc. Buy from fair agencies instead�. There would be a link to the member�s website or their portfolio on recommended sites. The member would also list top 5 or top 10 keywords relevant to their portfolio.

4. The space alloted for designers' and agencies' entries would be similar to contributors.

5. The list should be filterable (by specialty, location, keywords, etc.) and searchable. The keywords should be clickable leading to a page displaying all members specializing in that keyword.

It might not impress Getty, but that would be one good place with a link to your business and with contact information.
Google might kill its page rank but they cannot ever kill the links leading to it. Until they notice it, their algorithm might actually place it higher in the search results for �Getty� than Getty Images  itself.
To some extent it could also connect buyers directly with sellers creating a real Getty-clean network. The website should earn for itself with fees from the agencies advertizing there who want to be perceived as fair.

What do you think about it? Anyone with skills and time wanting to set it up?

Given that for me - and I think many/most of us - the primary goal is to produce work we can license, I'm not inclined to spend more time than necessary on other tasks.

Getty will continue to trample all over photographers/musicians/illustrators as they have done since they started the business. I think focusing on boosting other places to sell our work - whether it's our own web sites, other agencies - will likely yield us more net benefit than becoming full time social activists.

We need to take this detour to give Getty the bully enough of a bloody nose that they back off and leave us alone. If they persist, we get our work out of their greedy little mits.

Some sort of "search central" site pointing to artists' own sites (or their primary agency) - no reference to Getty or boycotts - sounds much more interesting to me.

i would have thought facebook is far easier, plus easier to share and share and share. not sure i'd bother uploading pics, but those screen shots of "your file has been deactivated" is v powerful.