MANILA, Philippines – Getty Images announced it was making 35 million images available for non-commercial use. For bloggers, this means you can now embed a Getty Image resource on your blog post without issue.

The keyword to note in this case is “embed.” Getty Images now has code you can use to embed images onto your website.

The code allows the image to be served on websites with full copyright information intact. With the embed in place, the image is automatically backlinked to an image’s license page on Getty Images.

The announcement and the embed code technology was made in response to growing infringement concerns. In a report on the British Journal of Photography (BJP), Craig Peters, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Content, and Marketing at Getty Images, noted that the company was “really starting to see the extent of online infringement.”

Peters added, “In essence, everybody today is a publisher thanks to social media and self-publishing platforms. And it’s incredibly easy to find content online and simply right-click to utilize it.”

Benefits and repercussions

Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images, noted in a statement how enabling legal sharing would benefit more people.

“Innovation and disruption are the foundation of Getty Images, and we are excited to open up our vast and growing image collection for easy, legal sharing in a new way that benefits our content contributors and partners, and advances our core mission to enable a more visually-rich world,” he said.

Peters explained that blogs drawing revenue from Google Ads could still use Getty Images embed codes without cost. “We would not consider this commercial use,” said Peters.

Peters added, “The fact today that a website is generating revenue would not limit the use of the embed. What would limit that use is if they used our imagery to promote a service, a product or their business. They would need to get a license.”

BJP also reported that a spokeswoman for Getty Images confirmed that editorial websites will also be able to use the embed feature as long as images are used in an editorial context.

The decision itself will have an impact on photographers who sell stock photographs, as well as other institutions that license stock photography. Getty Images contributors cannot opt out of the new system, for one thing.

Peters also said some other agencies may want to follow Getty Images’ lead and open up their libraries, and he says Getty Images is open to the possibility of sharing its stock photo embed system with other groups. He added, “We think this is a bigger decision and a bigger issue than Getty Images. We’ve always been opened to using our platform to benefit other content creators.” – Rappler.com