Getty Images has announced via email that from 6 November, they will no longer accept any new images under rights-managed (RM) licensing agreements. All images managed by the agency will only be on a Royalty Free licensing model. Images currently held by Getty under RM arrangements will be removed by the end of January 2020, with the RM licensing model being deleted completely by November 2020.
The stock photo agency Getty Images is now owned, once again, by the Getty family. The stock photo agency was started in 1997 by Mark Getty and CEO Jonathan Klein. The agency was acquired in 2008 by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. Then the company again traded hands in 2012 and was purchased by the Carlyle Group. Going full circle, the Getty family has purchased a majority stake in the company, all of Carlyle’s ownership, and “ongoing financial interest in the future growth”.
When photographer Carol Highsmith began donating images for public use to the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division in 1988, she did not imagine that one day an image licensing giant (Getty) would be profiting from her photographs. In fact, the manner in which she discovered Getty was falsely licensing her public domain images was through a cease and desist letter from them demanding she remove one of her own images from her personal website, or pay a $120 fine. She has since filed a $1 Billion lawsuit against Getty and Alamy.