mattie_p writes
"Getty Images, an American stock photo agency with over 80 million still photographs and more than 50,000 hours of video in its catalog, is offering about 35 million images for non-profit use for free, according to a report from the BBC and recent changes to its terms of use, in an effort to combat piracy.
Getty Images realized that many of their photographs have been utilized in the past without attribution, and embeds the photographs in code that links back to its own site. By offering the ability to embed photos, Getty is saying it cannot effectively police the use of its images in every nook and cranny of the internet. Yet it also may use the code to serve advertisements in the future, allowing it to make revenue by sharing its catalog.
Getty has been both the plaintiff and defendant in several lawsuits regarding use of their images online. This experiment may bode well for the future of freely (as in beer) distributed intellectual property in a free and connected society, but then again, maybe not."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Saturday March 08 2014, @11:23AM
Seems pretty obvious to me that whether they run ads or not, their images will be used as "web bugs" to track people's browsing habits without their knowledge.
I don't see this development as particularly good for anyone but Getty (and the companies that will pay for that data).