Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc. is an American site, which was founded in 1995 by the heirs billion Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein. Their headquarters are located in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, the European office in London, the German subsidiary in Munich. In total, about 1,600 people are employed in over 50 countries.
Getty Images has an archive of over 80 million images and illustrations, and some 30,000 hours of moving pictures. The company operates in three business segments: advertising / graphic design, media ( print and online publications) and company communication with other companies. Getty Images has offices around the world and published collections of images on the Internet and on CD- ROM. The company is located in direct competition with Bill Gates ' Corbis.
History
In 1996 the company acquired the image archive of the Picture Post, which trades under the name Hulton Archive now Picture Library and Hulton. The archive is one of the largest photography collections in the world and is home to, among others, the British press Press archive from the 19th century, which are digitally accessible. In April 2003 Getty Images went into an alliance with the news agency Agence France-Presse, bringing both companies guaranteed access to the respective image archives. 2005, the company with the Grants for Good and Grants for Editorial Photography Scholarships in the amount of $ 150,000 annually brought to life, to be awarded to photojournalist, nonprofit photographers and students. In February 2006, Getty Images acquired the Canadian microstock agency iStockphoto.
In January 2008, the Agency has found itself up for sale and found after a month in search of the holding company Hellman & Friedman a new owner. The acquisition price was $ 2.4 billion including debt, the purchase price of $ 34 per share (55% premium to the last closing price) $ 2,100,000,000.
2009 went Getty Images cooperation with Flickr, which allows members of the Image hoster to have license their images at Getty Images.
In August 2012, the publicly traded U.S. equity firm Carlyle Group acquired a majority stake in Getty Images. Co-founder Mark Getty and his family remain at the company almost to the same extent as in the past involved.
As of March 2014, the company introduced 35 million images for free use for non-commercial purposes. However, the photos must be included on the website as an embedded link and Getty reserves the right to collect from the embedded code data, display advertising and to delete the photos again.
Copyright
In early 2008 came Getty Images criticism of the network community because the company apparently in large numbers not abmahnte licensed imagery and demanded for the unlawful use four-digit totals in height per image. According to media reports Getty Images underwent this error, so that customers were reprimanded, who possessed a valid license.
Getty Images collaborates with the American- Israeli company PicScout to search the internet for copyright- protected images.
In September 2008, a computer company Getty Images challenged by a negative declaration and thereby suffered a defeat.
In May 2011, was launched an information campaign launched in collaboration with the Federation of press photo agencies and picture archives Stock Photo Rights, which seeks to educate people in the field of copyright and licensing of images.