Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 141 posts

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#61

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

tomxor wrote: post #52
RobertRoberts wrote: post #8

Getty is the epitome of the evil corporation. They threatened a number of my customers (who all won against Getty via lawyers) for putting photos on their sites with dubious ownership rights. I have experience with copyright law (unpleasantly) and there is a process required by the law to actually win a settlement on copyright infringement, and Getty uses thug tactics and threats to get small parties to pay up. Their…

Yeah, looks like the majority of their revenue is literally based on entrapment: > Just over half of Getty’s revenues, according to industry estimates, come from distributing “stock” photos — images of generic subjects, such as “house” or “orange juice” or “corporate executive,” that a commercial client might use in brochures, websites or advertisements.

They have some bots crawling around the web and sending out automated letters then to people who they think need to license their photos. I fucked around with the bit and wasted its energy since it came to my territory, at least 4 years ago it wasn't very smart. I just told them point blank to fuck off, probably they go only after American customers since they are in the legislation area to threaten.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#62

Post by bcrosby95 »

mkirch wrote: post #48
masona wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food image. It's super hard! Just the rights management issue of the training set is a tough question. Then you have to account for quality, direction and dimensionality of light, food styling, props, custom products or ingredients, the list of challenges goes on an on. Then after the image is produced, if you're a food company, all your imagery…

I do wonder if the rights management issue is impacted by the decision referenced in this article regarding training machine learning models on copyrighted material: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-co... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,... .

It seems like part of that case hinged on economic impact. If you're using copyrighted books and show snippets of the book that's one thing. But using copyrighted material to build something that is attempting to replace the copyrighted material seems like it could have gone the other way.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#63

Post by blhack »

kachurovskiy wrote: post #20

Registered on Shutterstock 11 months ago, added 9 photos, sold 3 for a grand total of $0.75. Selling stock photos made sense for photographers 10-20 years ago, not worth it anymore unless you're at the very top. For the reference: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MateoSan

The reason people didn't buy these is because there isn't enough continuous color anywhere to put text on top of.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#64

Post by logfromblammo »

nordsieck wrote: post #15
pupppet wrote: post #4

I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way. I get there's hardware/time involved in setting up a single photo, but hell, not that much.

> I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way. Honestly, that doesn't bother me that much. What's truly absurd is wedding photography. Photographers get paid $1000+ and keep the copyright. Almost every other work-for-hire intellectual job involves an IP…

Wedding photography is ridiculous even before the photographers get involved. The entire weddings industry in the US is one giant rabbit hole, capable of absorbing any amount of money, no matter how large, and returning little more than "an emotional experience" for it.

It's easy to get the copyright. Just say it's work done for hire, the RAWs are part of the deliverables, and they won't have to shoot anything stupid. If they balk, break it off and contact someone else.

Their job is lighting, framing, focus, capture, in that order. Postprocessing and prints are not part of the deal unless they can upsell it.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#65

Post by z3t4 »

masona wrote: post #33
x__x wrote: post #22

Surprised there was no mention of the upcoming threat of AI stock photos, and how easy it will be to generate massive amounts of these fast and cheap. Ne real people, who won't have to sign contracts or be paid. https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875362/100000-fake-ai-p...

Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food image. It's super hard! Just the rights management issue of the training set is a tough question. Then you have to account for quality, direction and dimensionality of light, food styling, props, custom products or ingredients, the list of challenges goes on an on. Then after the image is produced, if you're a food company, all your imagery…

I would love a image generator that would make images based on the ingredients. When creating a recipe database, not only do you have to photograph thousands of dishes, you also have to cook them.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#66

Post by SignalsFromBob »

zozbot234 wrote: post #47
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (human) models and photographers will be in real trouble when generative models are able to make an ad on the fly with a fake person who looks like your neighbor with the best landscaping using the advertised lawnmower.

Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.

This has changed. It's hard to tell they're fake. For example, each reload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ produces a new computer-generated image of a person.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#67

Post by sudosysgen »

irrational wrote: post #59
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.

It's time to check again. The latest ones are indistinguishable from real humans, at least to my eye. Somehow the uncanny valley has been crossed already.

Form what I remember that AI could only do one pose.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#68

Post by codereflection »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #8

Getty is the epitome of the evil corporation. They threatened a number of my customers (who all won against Getty via lawyers) for putting photos on their sites with dubious ownership rights. I have experience with copyright law (unpleasantly) and there is a process required by the law to actually win a settlement on copyright infringement, and Getty uses thug tactics and threats to get small parties to pay up. Their…

I never knew this. I've known several developer who worked for Getty and had a positive experience. Of course that experience has nothing to do with their legal tactics.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#69

Post by greendestiny_re »

I don't understand why photographers don't sell their services as opposed to single photos for a few cents each. I've written plenty of articles for a popular website (now defunct) where I looked through Google Images for hours to find an "appropriate, interesting and HD image" (exact job requirements).

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#70

Post by liability »

greendestiny_re wrote: post #69

I don't understand why photographers don't sell their services as opposed to single photos for a few cents each. I've written plenty of articles for a popular website (now defunct) where I looked through Google Images for hours to find an "appropriate, interesting and HD image" (exact job requirements).

How long would it take for you to find a photographer, explain what you're looking for, negotiate a price and then finally receive the photographs you wanted? Probably more than a few hours.

This is where Getty adds value IMHO. Their site is a quick way to find extant photographs that fit most needs. (For this, I think their search is better than Google's.)

Post reply on HN