New Contracts at Getty Images Raising Eyebrows

Getty Images, one of the larger photo agencies, has a new contract that’s being sent to their contributors according to Photo District News. Thenew contract stipulates that some images can be moved out of the standard rights managed archives and into the royalty free area after a set amount of time.

The American Society of Media Photographers and the American Photographers Association have raised an alarm over the issue.

The uproar is over Getty’s new contract terms for its contributors, which enable the agency to move rights-managed images that haven’t been licensed for three years or longer to its royalty-free collections, and make royalty-free images available in its subscription products. The trade groups say the new terms further undermine stock photo pricing, as well as photographers’ control over their work and their ability to protect their copyrights.