Corbis

Corbis is a US-based digital media company. It takes care of the sale and distribution of photographs and film materials and related rights. The collection includes more than 100 million images and competes with Getty Images to the rank of the largest image and media archive in the world.

Corbis is headquartered in Seattle, with 21 offices in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia. The company is privately owned by Bill Gates, was established by him in 1989 under the name Interactive Home Systems. Originally Bill Gates wanted to secure media content that should be in return for royalties on plasma screens, which should replace the photo frame projected. Mid-1990s, was installed as an interim step, a "traditional" Agency to license users of the images. The image archive comprised in 2006 some 100 million images, of which almost four million are also available online. The vast majority of this is managed.

Divisions

Licensing of images and media search

Corbis represents some famous collections, such as the collection of the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Condé Nast archive with a variety of historic recordings. Corbis has, since 1995, one of the world's most valuable collection of historical recordings, the Bettmann Archive with about 11 million media. Its special feature is the storage location of the originals, deep in a former mine in Pennsylvania. The archive had to move from New York in the new deposit in order to safeguard the sensitive negatives, some of which still exist on photographic plates of glass from being destroyed by humidity and changing temperatures. As part of this transaction, tens of thousands were partly valuable originals irretrievably lost, resulting in a wave of lawsuits damaged photographers ' absence.

The famous Sygma archive with about 50 million specimens located in Corbis possession. It was added to the collection in 1999 and is preserved in France.

Legal department

Corbis named his department for legal services in 2008 in Green Light to. She takes care of licensing content whose shares, representing rights holders and negotiations as well as rights clearance ( clearing of rights of third parties in pictures, movies, etc.). GreenLight represents some rights owner directly, including the personal rights of Bruce Lee, Johnny Cash and June Carter, the Andy Warhol Foundation, Steve McQueen, Mae West, the Wright Brothers and Albert Einstein. With this service, Corbis generates 20 percent of its sales (as of 2008).

Broadcasting

Not only images can be licensed, but also film, eg for use in commercials.

Media Management

Since its inception, Corbis has no profit.

Offices

The main office of Corbis is located in Seattle, USA, European headquarters in London and with offices including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and Vienna.

Criticism

Purchases of Corbis in the 90s was always accompanied by rumors and reports of spectacular bad investments. Among other things, image archives were bought, where they had made ​​a mistake in the specialization or realized in retrospect that the rights of third parties were.