Giveaway

Who gets to use the pictures photographers work hard to create has taken another turn.  Earlier this month, Getty Images announced they would allow 35 million photos in their collection to be used at no charge for non-commercial purposes (see article).  As expected, this has caused heated argument from many angles.  Some view it as one more assault on the intellectual property rights of individual photographers, while others see it simply as a business plan modification in a 21^st century world of new technologies (piece in Bloomberg Businessweek).  One thing’s for sure, the value of an image copyright is declining rapidly.