http://wherewestand.gettyimages.com/advocacy/?esource=2016_4_ALL_GI_GoogleComplaint_EN_SEG

I received e-mail about this from Getty. I don't see any articles about it yet.

I guess the earlier strategy of embracing sharing but trying to make money from it via the embedding in blogs for free, the Yahoo metadata deal or the Google Drive deal has been abandoned?

Somehow, I wish google lose this time.

Will be interesting to see what happens and how fairly Getty compensate the people who supply them if they win.

Its good news. I hope the case catches attention and raises awereness of copyrights.

L�hetetty minun D6503 laitteesta Tapatalkilla

Evil against another evil.

Getty is getting desperate.

Google shows Getty images with watermarks. It's not like they remove the watermarks and let people steal images.

Google implemented bigger previews (which they get from Getty) because it's user friendly. Got forbid that a company tries to make it easier on the user. Getty only want google to show their tiny thumbnails so the users click to Getty to get a bigger preview, which makes the user experience lousy. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

Maybe they can request Google to not spider their site at all...that will take care of all the problems.

The other sites might be frightened of losing an expensive legal battle with Google and finding they have sunk without trace in the search results.  I think governments should be dealing with Google.  Copyright laws are quite straightforward and should apply to everyone.  Other internet businesses that have allowed people to flaunt copyright laws have been dealt with by governments.  Taking on Google in the courts must be a daunting task because they have such deep pockets.  Getty might be thinking that Google will want to settle this quickly to avoid bad publicity.

The other sites might be frightened of losing an expensive legal battle with Google and finding they have sunk without trace in the search results.  I think governments should be dealing with Google.  Copyright laws are quite straightforward and should apply to everyone.  Other internet businesses that have allowed people to flaunt copyright laws have been dealt with by governments.  Taking on Google in the courts must be a daunting task because they have such deep pockets.  Getty might be thinking that Google will want to settle this quickly to avoid bad publicity.

very wise person !!!
it's like the undesirbles in the old colonial days taking on the rajas or colonials. or modern day
asians or africans or brazilian favelas vs mafia,etc..ietaking on the corrupted rich backed by the govt.
it takes a very big person or an idiot like those movie legendaries eg david,maid of orleans, robin hood,etc ie. you must be either very brave or very stupid... to challenge a giant.

Here's what I see when I do a google search for Getty images. I get a preview of an image with a Getty watermark on it, so I don't know what they're suing for.

Maybe this lawsuit is related to something else, like people having access to a high resolution image without a watermark. But this again is the fault of Getty. It's their responsibility to prevent anyone from scrapping their website and access the high res images without paying. Maybe if they spend some time on improving their system (starting with iStock) instead of being complacent, they wouldn't be suffering in the first place.

I think it's about google video scanner. I have 640x360px watermark free frames of my videos all over google..

Read the articles again and don't take out speculations of your hat.

 Offering images to download at any available size without the authorization of the source is illegal. The WWW is not a place were anything that goes online is available to grab or facilitate to third parties without the approval of owners of copyright. For that you have Creative Commons but the reason of copyright to exist is because authors or their representatives have the right (as the word clearly hints.....Copy...Right) to decide who can or cannot download a file. Google is clearly violating this right that benefits them, pirates, customers that don't know about copyright BUT it clearly benefits NOT the creators.

Or maybe it's related to something else, like Google indexing images that were previous bought by someone else, who puts it on their website and gets indexed by Google without the watermark. Then someone else downloads it and uses it on their website without paying Getty.

If that's the case, then it's pretty complicated. The person who download the image probably never had the intention of paying Getty in the first place. But do we place the blame on Google? I mean why stop there? Why not any search engine who can index images? I've seen my own images on search engine without watermarks, but never at super high resolution and I rely on people to know what is legal and what is not legal and I would never blame Google.

Quote from: everest on April 28, 2016, 23:56

Read the articles again and don't take out speculations of your hat.

 Offering images to download at any available size without the authorization of the source is illegal. The WWW is not a place were anything that goes online is available to grab or facilitate to third parties without the approval of owners of copyright. For that you have Creative Commons but the reason of copyright to exist is because authors or their representatives have the right (as the word clearly hints.....Copy...Right) to decide who can or cannot download a file. Google is clearly violating this right that benefits them, pirates, customers that don't know about copyright BUT it clearly benefits NOT the creators.

And those images are all watermarked. Getty provide watermarked images in small and large sizes, Google merely indexes them. If someone downloads an image with a watermark on it and use it on their website, it's not the fault of Google.

No, they are not watermarked! Not mine so I guess, I'm far from alone.

Quote from: everest on April 28, 2016, 23:56

Read the articles again and don't take out speculations of your hat.

 Offering images to download at any available size without the authorization of the source is illegal. The WWW is not a place were anything that goes online is available to grab or facilitate to third parties without the approval of owners of copyright. For that you have Creative Commons but the reason of copyright to exist is because authors or their representatives have the right (as the word clearly hints.....Copy...Right) to decide who can or cannot download a file. Google is clearly violating this right that benefits them, pirates, customers that don't know about copyright BUT it clearly benefits NOT the creators.

And those images are all watermarked. Getty provide watermarked images in small and large sizes, Google merely indexes them. If someone downloads an image with a watermark on it and use it on their website, it's not the fault of Google.

It IS the fault of google because they are indexing everything and making it available to everyone to download. They are a HUGE company. Certainly they should be able to put some kind of watermark over all images before they show in their index.

Quote from: Minsc on April 29, 2016, 00:44

Quote from: everest on April 28, 2016, 23:56

Read the articles again and don't take out speculations of your hat.

 Offering images to download at any available size without the authorization of the source is illegal. The WWW is not a place were anything that goes online is available to grab or facilitate to third parties without the approval of owners of copyright. For that you have Creative Commons but the reason of copyright to exist is because authors or their representatives have the right (as the word clearly hints.....Copy...Right) to decide who can or cannot download a file. Google is clearly violating this right that benefits them, pirates, customers that don't know about copyright BUT it clearly benefits NOT the creators.

And those images are all watermarked. Getty provide watermarked images in small and large sizes, Google merely indexes them. If someone downloads an image with a watermark on it and use it on their website, it's not the fault of Google.

It IS the fault of google because they are indexing everything and making it available to everyone to download. They are a HUGE company. Certainly they should be able to put some kind of watermark over all images before they show in their index.

Here is a nice summary of the original compliant by Getty:

http://www.thesempost.com/getty-images-blames-google-not-competitors/

Getty is blaming Google for the loss of sales, instead of its own incompetence. In the google images search, you can clearly see that the high res images are watermarked. They're complaining that Google shouldn't show the high res watermarked images because people already saw a preview and that discourages traffic to Getty, therefore reduce potential sales to that user.

If the images are watermarked, then the image is protected. If the image is NOT watermarked, Getty's incompetent web team is allowing Google to crawl protected content, so the blame rest with them. Either way, you can't blame Google, because they are a search engine.

From what I gathered, Getty wants certain things from Google and they're not getting it. They want the image search to show only tiny thumbnails (preferably around 200x200), so that it's tiny and push the user to visit Getty instead of seeing the high res watermarked image on Google. Second, they WANT google to index their images because it helps generate traffic to their website. If they opt out of Google Image Search, they can lose as much as 50% in traffic to their website. And they're complaining that their search rankings are not high enough because other websites outrank them sometimes.

What Getty wants is completely unreasonable. They're a bunch of whiners and they rather blame a search engine instead their incompetence for losing so much market share in such a short time.

Getty suing Google because they're not doing well is like a contributor suing Getty because they're not doing well. Everyone plays by the same set of rules and Shutterstock is thriving. Getty is not happy that Shutterstock is thriving, so they want special treatment from Google.

When you read the whole complaint, Getty has no case. Google is doing what a search engine is supposed to do. Every agency has their watermarked images indexed. Shutterstock, 123RF, FT, Dreamstime, Getty, Istock, etc. Google Image Search increases traffic to all those site and quite frankly, I'm proud to have many of my images show up on the Image Search from different sites. I believe it's great for SEO and brings new more traffic to my images.

Getty made a video about how much they cared about contributors and that's completely BS. They care less about contributors than any agency out there. They're notorious for sending out extortion letters to people and demanding thousands of dollars from infringers and contributors get none of it. They're a bully and is trying their best to hold on to the status quo. In secret, they probably want people to steal their images, so they can demand thousands per images that can be bought for a few dollars on other sites.

I am sorry to say but you still don't get it. You keep bouncing against a wall......take a few steps back and look and the whole picture on it.

"Getty suing Google because they're not doing well".....so where do you get that......some Sherlock Holmes deduction or too much wishful thinking. Gettyimages is a huge corporation distributing a variety of content that is way beyond microstock agencies ( Footage of news and stills, Sports venues, red carpet, stock ( RM and RF),...... and of course (thankfully it has competing agencies which  I truly celebrate- if not all content creators would suffer much more).

  The reason of Getty not doing well is basically that they let Investment funds plunder their deposit box and aquiring large amounts of debt. There are other reasons of course�..the appearance of microstock, nano stock, subscription, free images, creative commons,��.. and Piracy. We could talk and write the next months back and forth about all the other issues that affect Getty (and the other agencies) but for the sake of this post I will stick to the reasons why Getty is suing Google. You posted an article where there is a link to the original press release of why Getty is taking this action: http://press.gettyimages.com/getty-images-granted-interested-party-status-in-eus-investigation-into-anticompetitive-behavior-by-google/

I think it is very clear why they are suing��argumented by facts and not some speculations like in your post.
�When you read the whole complaint, Getty has no case.� Well lets see what the EU has to say, don�t rush into wishful thinking again��
�Google Image Search increases traffic to all those site and quite frankly, I'm proud to have many of my images show up on the Image Search from different sites. I believe it's great for SEO and brings new more traffic to my images.� No problem with that, I like that my images are also present on web search results. The difference is that I want that those small resolution images lead to the content creator and to get compensated, and what I don�t want is that �non willing to pay customers� download directly a high resolution image of a client link to that image that paid their fee to use that image.

�They care less about contributors than any agency out there� They care not more nor less that Shutterstock , Adobe,etc,etc��..other agencies that want to maximize profits at the costs of contributors. Now there are a new breed of agencies driven by contributors that I hope someday will change this panorama and drag down all the Gettys, Shutters and Adobes of this business.

�They're notorious for sending out extortion letters to people and demanding thousands of dollars from infringers and contributors get none of it� False. Thank God they are one of the few agencies that still care about copyright compliance. When I was nonexclusive I contacted support of many agencies about copyright fraud��..what happened�..nothing. By the way, in my monthly Getty statement that I received this month I had more revenue from license compliances  than actual sales, so they clearly share part of the recouped money when they succeed to catch the infringers.

�In secret, they probably want people to steal their images, so they can demand thousands per images that can be bought for a few dollars on other sites.� Nope they simple want that if a customer buys their content, he/she uses it within the legitime uses of the license.

So after speculating fo a while about the reasons of Getty suing Google in a few posts let me guess too. Maybe the reason you feel uncomfortable with this Getty move is because you at some point received one of those license compliance letters, or you are one of the people that uses the facilities of Google to download improperly copyrighted content��Am I wrong in my speculation?......

Getty suing Google because they're not doing well is like a contributor suing Getty because they're not doing well. Everyone plays by the same set of rules and Shutterstock is thriving. Getty is not happy that Shutterstock is thriving, so they want special treatment from Google.

When you read the whole complaint, Getty has no case. Google is doing what a search engine is supposed to do. Every agency has their watermarked images indexed. Shutterstock, 123RF, FT, Dreamstime, Getty, Istock, etc. Google Image Search increases traffic to all those site and quite frankly, I'm proud to have many of my images show up on the Image Search from different sites. I believe it's great for SEO and brings new more traffic to my images.

Getty made a video about how much they cared about contributors and that's completely BS. They care less about contributors than any agency out there. They're notorious for sending out extortion letters to people and demanding thousands of dollars from infringers and contributors get none of it. They're a bully and is trying their best to hold on to the status quo. In secret, they probably want people to steal their images, so they can demand thousands per images that can be bought for a few dollars on other sites.

I am sorry to say but you still don't get it. You keep bouncing against a wall......take a few steps back and look and the whole picture on it.

Actually, I know exactly why they're suing. I rather use deduction than listen to corporate babble. So I'll explain it to you one last time.

Google created Google Image Search in 2001. As many companies continue to do after its first iteration, they keep improving it, be it visual design or overall usability. In 2013, they added a new feature...image previews. This image preview allow a user like you and I to view a larger image preview instead of looking at a thumbnail.

When they implemented this feature, web traffic dropped, not just for Getty, but for a lot of website. The reason was because the image preview gave the user what they need to see instead of clicking a blurry thumbnail which takes them to another website. This was done to improve the usability of Google Image Search and it has.

When this happened, Getty was furious. They saw their traffic dropped and some revenue drop. The whined and complained to Google to no avail. Google basically said you can opt out of Image Search, but Getty reluctantly agreed to continued to be crawled.

As Getty's marketshare and revenue continue to erode, they got more bitter and angry. The WANT Google to remove the preview feature so Google users continue to see a tiny thumbnail. Google Refused, so Getty lawyers comes up with different creative ways to shame Google...people stealing images, Google is promoting piracy, blah, blah, blah. So now they attached themselves to a lawsuit, in hopes of getting Google to change their search engine and remove image previews.

So there you have it, the entire reason why Getty is suing. Getty won't opt out of Google Image Search because they will become invisible to the internet, but they want Google to make the usability of the Image Search worse so they may see more traffic to their site. As contributors, we see Stock search engines to change all the time, from gigantic previews, to socialistic image rotation to revenue cuts that erode our revenue, but we're all not suing like Getty...or maybe we should sued them for their Redeemed Credits system.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/28/getty_on_google/

Have you actually read what you linked too?  The examples of people getting the wrong end of the stick are pretty much verbatim what you have posted.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/28/getty_on_google/

Have you actually read what you linked too?  The examples of people getting the wrong end of the stick are pretty much verbatim what you have posted.

Yes, I have. And I can't side with Getty on this situation. Every search engine has adopted the same preview feature (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckgo), but Getty is only going after the biggest player and they're suing to make a product harder to use. This is a slippery slope. After Getty is done with Google, they'll want to do the same to other search engines assuming they win.

I refuse to side with a company that wants to reduce the usability of a product. Not to mention their dishonest public release about why they're suing. They want to make search harder to use, which goes against the philosophy of product design and usability. Google did makes some changes by adding "Visit website" buttons to each image, which drives high quality traffic as opposed to low quality traffic that many websites were getting.

With bigger previews, users are able to clearly see the watermarks of each agency. If people want to buy an expensive image from Getty, they will buy an expensive image from Getty. If they don't, they won't.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 30, 2016, 13:51

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/28/getty_on_google/

Have you actually read what you linked too?  The examples of people getting the wrong end of the stick are pretty much verbatim what you have posted.

Yes, I have. And I can't side with Getty on this situation. Every search engine has adopted the same preview feature (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckgo), but Getty is only going after the biggest player and they're suing to make a product harder to use. This is a slippery slope. After Getty is done with Google, they'll want to do the same to other search engines assuming they win.

I refuse to side with a company that wants to reduce the usability of a product. Not to mention their dishonest public release about why they're suing. They want to make search harder to use, which goes against the philosophy of product design and usability. Google did makes some changes by adding "Visit website" buttons to each image, which drives high quality traffic as opposed to low quality traffic that many websites were getting.

With bigger previews, users are able to clearly see the watermarks of each agency. If people want to buy an expensive image from Getty, they will buy an expensive image from Getty. If they don't, they won't.

You are missing something crucial. Getty is suing Google in the EU where the european commission is accusing Google of abuse of dominant position regarding its internet search and android business. If Google is find guilty, as Microsoft has been in the past, then a bunch of companies will have a good case to suing them back.

Quote from: Minsc on April 30, 2016, 15:07

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 30, 2016, 13:51

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/28/getty_on_google/

Have you actually read what you linked too?  The examples of people getting the wrong end of the stick are pretty much verbatim what you have posted.

Yes, I have. And I can't side with Getty on this situation. Every search engine has adopted the same preview feature (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckgo), but Getty is only going after the biggest player and they're suing to make a product harder to use. This is a slippery slope. After Getty is done with Google, they'll want to do the same to other search engines assuming they win.

I refuse to side with a company that wants to reduce the usability of a product. Not to mention their dishonest public release about why they're suing. They want to make search harder to use, which goes against the philosophy of product design and usability. Google did makes some changes by adding "Visit website" buttons to each image, which drives high quality traffic as opposed to low quality traffic that many websites were getting.

With bigger previews, users are able to clearly see the watermarks of each agency. If people want to buy an expensive image from Getty, they will buy an expensive image from Getty. If they don't, they won't.

You are missing something crucial. Getty is suing Google in the EU where the european commission is accusing Google of abuse of dominant position regarding its internet search and android business. If Google is find guilty, as Microsoft has been in the past, then a bunch of companies will have a good case to suing them back.

I know what it means. Europe can't handle that fact that an American company is handling all their information and the politicians can't handle the fact that they can't hide their misdeeds while Google is around. People don't need to use Google...it's a choice. It's not like Windows where nearly every computer needs it to operate.

Maybe some of those socialist countries should stop sitting around and build their own search engine instead. Russia built Yandax and China built Baidu. What's stopping them?

What socialist countries?

Google has done more to destroy the free market with their lobbying than any other company in history. They make massive contributions to both sides of the Isle to ensure their monopoly, and they make the senators that are in their pocket canvas eu policy makers when they are threatened in Europe.

The tech market is now full of firms who's target is to be bought up by Google, a competitor, rather than continue to build and compete with them. How is that not a horrific distortion of the market?  That innovators are hoovered up by one giant company rather than striving against each other to produce the best solutions is grotesque.

The tech market is full of firms that want to be bought up by any large company, not just Google. That's the nature of any company that takes funding from investors who wants a 10x return. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Uber, Microsoft, you name it are all companies who have acquired a large amount of companies. Hell, even our good friends at Getty has tried to swallow up the image market with aggressive acquisitions.

While Google hasn't all been innocent, you forget who has been buying up influence behind in the scenes in the EU, the one company that's been pulling the strings and pushing the anti-Google campaign in the shadows...Microsoft.

I'm not exactly calling Google some angelic company, but Getty still doesn't have a legitimate case. Everyone plays by the same rule book, and Getty think they can get their past glory back by suing Google. Little do they know, the market is slowly leaving them behind.