I wrote about the new Getty contract in early April (here) and there was some excellent discussion in the comments about the whole deal, so I thought I’d bring this latest announcement by the American Photographic Artists (APA) to your attention. In a statement the APA said “Adopting baseless, self- imposed deadlines and threatening to terminate contributors who do not accept changes to their existing contracts is not acceptable. As a community, we cannot continue to ignore Getty Images’ efforts to intimidate and strong-arm contributors, and we must not allow Getty Images to force contributors into signing these new contracts under duress.”

The APA contacted Getty through their lawyers asking them to extend the deadline and make clear to all contributors that not signing the agreement will not result in the automatic termination of prior agreements or removal of all their images but Getty refused to respond.

The signing deadline has passed, so I’m wondering if the APA is going to file a lawsuit.

You can download the statements (here).

UPDATE: The AOP (Association of Photographers) agrees with APA that “these changes are unacceptable and that the ‘solutions’ that Getty Images has offered are entirely inadequate and fail to resolve even the most basic concerns.” Read it (here).

Recommended Posts

5 Comments

  1. As our previous statements explained, APA is deeply concerned with the contract changes that Getty Images recently imposed on its contributors. These changes threaten to erode contributing artists’ fundamental rights to control their creative works, a trend that is all the more concerning given Getty Images’ efforts to emphasize Premium Access sales and its recent acquisition of PicScout. APA also is extremely troubled by the manner in which Getty Images forced these changes on its contributors, including the baseless “deadline” that Getty Images manufactured in a transparent attempt to scare contributors into agreeing to these changes without proper consideration. APA made clear to Getty Images that we disapprove of these strong-arm tactics and that we would not sit idly by while it, yet again, attempted to leverage its position in the industry to force contributors to relinquish even more control over their creative works. Unfortunately, despite efforts from APAand numerous other industry organizations, Getty Images refused to extend its self-imposed deadline and was willing to accept only marginal revisions to its proposed changes. Getty Images’ response was insufficient and its handling of this matter has been unacceptable. While we will continue to attempt to engage Getty Images in a direct dialogue, APA is diligently exploring every possible avenue available to us to address these concerns. Although we cannot provide specific details at this time, rest assured that APA will continue to advocate vigorously on behalf of our members and stock photography professionals generally.

  2. My real concern is that Getty’s sliding down the slippery slope of removing the entire category of anyone being a “stock photography professional” …. replacing the profession entirely with amateurs, replacing those pesky enough to demand fair terms with those willing to sign anything in order to “get published”

  3. I have great hope that Getty will simply become known as the amateur photography stock agency, and new agencies with better modus operandi will arise from these sad ashes.

  4. Let’s see twitpic wants to sell users photos and that gets 68 responses in a day and Getty has the worst terms ever for contributors and gets only 3 responses, WHAT GIVES?!?!?


Comments are closed for this article!