Getty Images accepts the logic of the web

Okay, let’s get one thing clear before we go any further. Access to all my web content is completely free, with the proviso that anybody using it cites me as the author. Secondly, I pay for the use of many images, from 123RF, a stock photo site. Thirdly, I also pay for innumerable apps, licenses, and other web-based services; my credit card is never far from my computer, so anybody who thinks that I believe that everything on the web should be free is very much mistaken.

Getty Images is changing its business model, and instead of charging users for non-water marked stock, will now provide an embedding application allowing for free use of photos only under certain conditions. As of now, images from the world’s biggest depository of images will be free, a move that has been called cynical, as well as generating protest from photographers who license their material on the site. For those who oppose the logic of the web, Getty’s move is a Hindenburg moment. As I once said some time ago: if your business model is based on preventing others from accessing to your bits, get a new business model.

Does this mean that we are all obliged to offer our services and content for free on the web? Obviously not. Let’s look at what led Getty Images to make this move. Until now, it was necessary to buy a license to access its catalogue. To prevent people from simply taking screen shots of the images in its catalogue, Getty superimposed a watermark on them. But of course once the image had been bought, it could be posted on the web, easily found via a search engine, and then copied.

And this is what happened, meaning that innumerable people around the world have been using Getty’s images without paying for them: the company’s attempts to extract payment in such cases have largely proved fruitless, as well as generating bad publicity.

The previous situation was lose-lose-lose: Getty Images seemed unable to come up with a business model that would attract sufficient numbers of customers prepared to pay for its services, while the photographers and illustrators responsible for many of those images never got paid. At the same time, anybody using a Getty image they had acquired without paying, faced possible legal action and a fine they would never be able to pay.

So from here on, non-commercial bloggers and web site managers can use just about any image in Getty’s catalogue by using a specific embedding code. So, as long as you aren’t making any money out of the use of one of Getty’s images, there’s no problem. And they haven’t been too shy about it: there are plenty of images available for embedding in Getty’s catalogue. The but here is that in reality anybody using one of the company’s images is allowing Getty Images control over a part of their website. Getty Images reserves the right to remove the image at its discretion, as well as planting advertisements in it; something that not every page owner will be prepared to accept.

In practice this will mean more of Getty’s images on the web, and may generate new business models. At the same time it boosts Getty’s value proposal, as well as more revenue, which Getty says it will share with the men and women who supply it with images. On the one hand, Getty captures a new set of customers who are prepared to accept its terms and conditions; on the other, it is limiting the use of its application to large organizations, which will continue working under the old arrangement.

In other words, the company is not giving away its services; it is merely creating a new potential customer base among those users who would never have been able to pay its prices under the old system.

Clearly, Getty’s initiative doesn’t spell the end of charging for services online. The issue here is offering users the right conditions for “free” use. In my case, for example, under the old system it made no sense to try to charge me directly for an image. But when a company, such as 123RF, comes along with prices that seem reasonable and access to a large collection of images, then I’ll happily pay.

Any company trying to sell a product or service—music, movies, images, news, whatever—at the same prices as when physical storage and other logistics were involved, is going to fail. But if it instead offers its customers a value proposal based on reasonable prices, and understanding that by doing so it can attract people who would have fallen outside its customer base in the old days, then it has a reasonable chance of survival. Given that it is impossible to prevent your content from circulating on the web, the best thing you can do is to offer it at a price the market considers reasonable, and try to get a large part of that market to accept your proposal.

This means treating your potential market with respect, rather than hounding it through the courts and trying to get the law changed to your benefit. You are flogging a dead horse if you believe that you automatically have a right to be paid for your work online: you will only receive remuneration if you are able to convince the market to ask for it on your conditions. If you don’t, then you won’t get any money. It’s the way of the world, but something that a lot of people just can’t seem to get their heads round. And today’s companies would do well to keep such people at a distance from their boards: anybody who talks in terms of “piracy” or the need to change the law to prevent freeloaders “getting away with murder” clearly do not understand the world we live in.

If you used to have a product that can be digitalized and that people had to pay for in the days before the web, but that they can now find for free, you’re going to have to come up with a good reason for them to start paying for it again. And your prices will not be a shadow of those of the pre-web world. And neither should your costs, unless you refuse to adapt to new ways of doing things. The only rule is what the market is prepared to pay for what you have. The market isn’t “everybody”, and there will always be somebody who can get round your terms and conditions; so make sure that they are not considered excessive by the market, otherwise you’ll just be encouraging people to get round them. If they are reasonable, a fair proportion of the market will likely accept them, but you will never be able to stop some—who were probably never your market in the first place—from getting at your goods by other means than paying.

Getty Image’s initiative might work, and it might not. But it should be seen as a turning point; the moment when a large provider of digital products finally accepted that things have changed irrevocably, and decided to embrace the logic of the web.