WARNING: Getty Images Cracking Down! - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

**Cole** · 12-20-2006, 11:04 AM

Excerpt from another site:
Just a warning to everyone that may be using or has used unauthorized images from Getty. They are making a big sweep of sites and sending out bills when they find one of their images being used without permission. They are charging $1,000 USD per image. They are pursuing the site owners for this money. They are not sending out warnings. They do expect to get paid. If you have unauthorized Getty images, take them down.

A fellow designer just had 2 of his clients busted. One for $2,000 and the other for $4,000. The client wants the designer to pay since they weren't aware of him grabbing the images from Getty. Getty's stance is that it's the clients fault. Either way, not good business.

**ProWallGuy** · 12-20-2006, 11:44 AM

My stupid question of the day. Who or what is Getty?

**Teetorbilt** · 12-20-2006, 11:57 AM

Some dude in the oil biz.

**Nathan** · 12-20-2006, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ProWallGuy

My stupid question of the day. Who or what is Getty?

They are a massive stock photo company: gettyimages.com

istockphoto.com is the way to go for cheap images though.

mickeyco · 12-20-2006, 12:19 PM

gettyimages.com

Getty Images - the world's leading provider of imagery, film footage and digital services. Royalty-free and rights-managed stock photography, video footage....................

I've hit on this before, many web site designers/developers use images that they didn't buy (lifted somewhere on the internet), some templates that you purchase come with images that you actually have to pay for if you use them. It's best to use original graphics, your own pictures or ones that you purchased.

mickeyco · 12-20-2006, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nathan

They are a massive stock photo company: gettyimages.com

istockphoto.com is the way to go for cheap images though.

Sorry, I didn't reload the page before responding and missed your post, I agree that istockphoto.com is a great resource for reasonably priced images.

On another note the pictures have digital watermarks that are found by software that searches the internet (very quickly) for them, so they don't actually have to have a person look at every website on the internet to find them. In other words the chances of getting caught are not as remote as one would think.

**ProWallGuy** · 12-20-2006, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mickeyco

On another note the pictures have digital watermarks that are found by software that searches the internet (very quickly) for them, so they don't actually have to have a person look at every website on the internet to find them. In other words the chances of getting caught are not as remote as one would think.

Thanks for that, you just answered my second stupid question.

N.E.Bldg&Rest.LLC · 12-20-2006, 06:56 PM

How many of us have Getty images for an icon

PressurePros · 12-20-2006, 07:19 PM

This sounds a little hokey to me. How could they possibly track that? Let's say my graphic designer used a getty image as part of a graphic he did for me and didn't pay for the rights to that picture. Now lets say some hacks are getting paid to scan for Getty images. There are 50 million websites out there and Getty has tens of thousands of images. Unless someone used the getty image exactly as it was named on the website how could they find your graphic? On top of that, how would they then determine if the image was paid for or not?

Dustball · 12-20-2006, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PressurePros

This sounds a little hokey to me. How could they possibly track that? Let's say my graphic designer used a getty image as part of a graphic he did for me and didn't pay for the rights to that picture. Now lets say some hacks are getting paid to scan for Getty images. There are 50 million websites out there and Getty has tens of thousands of images. Unless someone used the getty image exactly as it was named on the website how could they find your graphic? On top of that, how would they then determine if the image was paid for or not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking

The digital watermark would be encoded into the image file itself. I would assume they'd have a program that looks for a certain sequence of bits in the image file that would identify it as theirs.

**Cole** · 12-20-2006, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PressurePros

This sounds a little hokey to me. How could they possibly track that? Let's say my graphic designer used a getty image as part of a graphic he did for me and didn't pay for the rights to that picture. Now lets say some hacks are getting paid to scan for Getty images. There are 50 million websites out there and Getty has tens of thousands of images. Unless someone used the getty image exactly as it was named on the website how could they find your graphic? On top of that, how would they then determine if the image was paid for or not?

I agree, if you didnt rename the image I think they could find it.

If you did rename it, I just dont see how they will be able to trace it.

PressurePros · 12-20-2006, 09:00 PM

Good information Dustball. Thank you. Thats how they can do it then.

mickeyco · 12-20-2006, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cole

I agree, if you didnt rename the image I think they could find it.

If you did rename it, I just dont see how they will be able to trace it.

The information is inside the image in code, take a small jpeg and rename the extention to from imagename.jpg to imagename.txt, now open it with notepad, what you're going to see is something like this:

ÿØÿà JFIF H H ÿÛ C

*4%'*=6A@<6;

LbSDH\I:;UtV\ehmnmBR x?wjbkmiÿÛ C22iF;Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiÿÂ È È" ÿÄ ÿÄ ÿÚ ÷? $ @ @$ (;ï?¤H4Å&Þ±^\? ''Lðieä²?9$ÙÇ[ÝPYÍt?ôw<¢?á°Ö Í¦?? "??§M~¦JÖðEõI»(??¦³?§?Ñ ??

inside this is coded all the information that can be tracked with software similar to what google uses to read your website, so it really doesn't matter what you name the file.

Below is a screen capture of some of the info that is coded into images decoded: