[HN Gopher] Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images
___________________________________________________________________
Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images
Author : baptlac
Score : 437 points
Date : 2021-03-30 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unsplash.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unsplash.com)
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Nature's first green is gold,
|
| Her hardest hue to hold.
|
| Her early leaf's a flower;
|
| But only so an hour.
|
| Then leaf subsides to leaf.
|
| So Eden sank to grief,
|
| So dawn goes down to day.
|
| Nothing gold can stay.
|
| -- Robert Frost
| beshrkayali wrote:
| Well, I'm deleting my stuff from there.
| sarabad2021 wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder how many other photographers will delete
| their photos. I'm curious, can you and will you be uploading
| them elsewhere?
| [deleted]
| mwambua wrote:
| I'm no expert on this, but I believe their license implies
| that you can upload your photos elsewhere:
| https://unsplash.com/license
|
| However, deleting your photos does not prevent other people
| from using them in the future.
| mwambua wrote:
| +1 Though I'm a little worried that the photos will end up
| there again... because of the permissive license.
| tomcooks wrote:
| There goes one actually useful site.
|
| Removing my user, thanks for all the fish.
| bb101 wrote:
| MySQL and Oracle all over again. Perhaps time to fork Unsplash
| and give birth to the MariaDB of open photography?
| cpach wrote:
| "Intellectual property is the oil of the 21 century. Look at the
| richest men a hundred years ago; they all made their money
| extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today's
| richest men have made their money out of intellectual property."
| -Mark Getty, founder of Getty Images
|
| https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Getty
| 23B1 wrote:
| "This is not one of those tech acquisitions where the company is
| bought to be shut down. Unsplash will continue to operate as a
| standalone brand and division of Getty Images."
|
| Sweet summer child
| [deleted]
| roberto wrote:
| Narrator: it was.
| zucker42 wrote:
| What is it about being the CEO of a startup that causes people
| to believe these promises?
| corobo wrote:
| The bank balance
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Everyone thinks "this time will be different"
| dhimes wrote:
| Indeed. The abused spouse syndrome. Although that's
| probably a more apt name for when you believe the same
| company for the nth time.
| dekerta wrote:
| I think it's more so something founders can tell themselves
| to feel better about the situation. Deep down they know
| it's not true
| IshKebab wrote:
| What makes you think they believe it?
| zucker42 wrote:
| For example, I honestly believe the Oculus founder believed
| the promises that you wouldn't ever need to use a FB
| account to use an Oculus, just given his public comments.
| twentydollars wrote:
| You can't use Oculus products now without a Facebook
| account?
| drusepth wrote:
| Without a Facebook account, your Oculus headset has
| "limited" features. There's also been a bunch of stories
| on HN from people who've bricked their headset when their
| linked Facebook account got banned or deleted.
|
| [1] https://www.oculus.com/blog/a-single-way-to-log-into-
| oculus-...
| dceddia wrote:
| Feels like, at this point, anyone in this situation surely
| knows what's gonna happen. They can't say it publicly,
| though, or at least, definitely not during the announcement!
|
| I can just imagine how that would go... "Today we have been
| purchased by BigCo. We'll try to keep things the same for as
| long as we can, but tbh all the founders got a 2 year
| agreement after which we get a boatload of money, and then
| we're outta here and they'll probably shut this whole thing
| down. Enjoy it while it lasts!"
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| They don't believe it. They want to cash out (fair enough)
| and just trying to keep community happy while they do so.
| question000 wrote:
| If the automobile was invented today it would be owned by the
| largest conglomeration of horse breeders.
| DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii wrote:
| Henry Ford had to fight what was essentially a patent troll
| when he started his motor company.
|
| https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-origin...
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| And you'd start it by sticking your hand out of the window and
| slapping the side with your buggy whip.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I remember reading that at the beginning,there was a
| requirement for a person to walk ahead of an automobile and
| alert others that it's coming. It was related to horse industry
| lobbying too.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > there was a requirement for a person to walk ahead of an
| automobile
|
| Yes. In the UK this requirement lasted until 1896 when it was
| removed by an act of Parliament [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotives_on_Highways_Act
| _18...
| leetrout wrote:
| I wish they'd been bought by smugmug instead.
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| I have to say this kind of announcement sticks in the craw. I get
| that Mikael Cho and colleagues created Unsplash and it's theirs
| to do with as they please: they don't owe us anything. But
| really, couldn't they just come right out and say "They offered
| us too much money, we couldn't resist, So long, suckers"?
| blunte wrote:
| nobody needs to say that anymore; it is a given.
|
| if you sell your company to a Getty or Facebook or Zoom, for
| example, you really were just selling your customers and
| eliminating yourself as competition, for probably a nice
| payoff. if you had a bad VC deal, then you the
| founders/builders might even get nothing.
| chinathrow wrote:
| I recently discovered Pexels for anyone looking for other sources
| after this.
|
| https://www.pexels.com
| jiofih wrote:
| Tons of portraits in there, but I see no mention of signed
| releases?
| yborg wrote:
| Very slick, and fast. But how do they pay for the site? There
| are no ads and no monetization I could find. The claim 4
| billion image views a month, that has to cost them some
| bandwidth...
| dannyw wrote:
| (I work for Canva).
|
| Pexels has affiliate ads (to paid stock sites) in specific
| locations; as an example, when your search returns zero
| Pexels results.
|
| Pexels content is also syndicated to Canva, where it is free
| to use (under the same license) by several hundred million
| users. This helps us provide a better Canva user experience,
| while giving more exposure to work on Pexels.
| yborg wrote:
| Ah. And Pexels is in fact owned by Canva, as is Pixabay.
| (What is it with Germany and picture-sharing sites?)
| ElFitz wrote:
| > Unsplash will continue to operate as a standalone brand and
| division of Getty Images. The entire Unsplash team will be
| staying and building Unsplash in the direction we have been. The
| main difference now is we have access to the resources and
| experience of Getty Images to help accelerate our plans to create
| the world's most useful visual asset library.
|
| Sounds so familiar.
|
| How many times have we heard this one? How many times has it
| remained true in the long run?
| dormento wrote:
| Just to save calories in case someone actually spends non-zero
| time thinking about this: _it is never true_. Its a "put 2 and
| 2 together" type thing.
|
| - Getty is a for-profit organization.
|
| - Profit means money.
|
| - Getty is lawsuit-happy.
|
| Now it is only a matter of time before Unsplash is "incredible
| journey'd".
| dhimes wrote:
| We need an office pool for the timeline.
| pnt12 wrote:
| Almost never.
|
| The current exception nowadays seems to be Microsoft.
| Minecraft, npm, github seem to be doing good, and keeping their
| core values and strengths.
| ncphil wrote:
| A very sad beginning of the end, but even more sadly,
| predictable. Rampant cannibalism from the top down. Will it ever
| stop?
| ArchUser2255 wrote:
| RIP Unsplash
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| If you want to create a free public resource do it, if you want
| to create a for profit business, by all means do that too. But
| for the love of all that's holy please stop trying to pretend
| you're making a free public resource and then backdooring in some
| crappy business model or exit strategy.
| danso wrote:
| Loved reading about their journey on HN. Here's a 5-year-old
| thread about their costs:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11519085
|
| Unfortunately the original link is down (and I could not find an
| archived version). But here's relevant material from the
| comments:
|
| > $18k is a lot of money to spend each month. Understanding the
| scale of Unsplash though can help explain the costs.
|
| > So at a cost of $18k per month you are getting 30M pages
| served, 140M API calls, 2.2M background jobs and 143TB of
| bandwidth. That sounds like a lot of bang for your buck.
|
| > The biggest chunk is the bandwidth charges from imgix. They do
| appear to be giving you a break on their published pricing, but
| not a huge one ($0.075/GB vs $0.08/GB). The CDN they are using
| appears to be Fastly, which also has a published price of
| $0.08/GB. So, there doesn't appear to be any overzealous markup
| on imgix's part.
| llacb47 wrote:
| https://archive.fo/iZyRK
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't mean to rain on their parade, but 30M requests served
| per month, while sounding really good, translates to 11
| requests per second. And maybe 60 requests per second for their
| 140M API requests.
|
| If I were paying $2500 per month for that I'd be a bit sad.
| vbernat wrote:
| They say it's mostly bandwidth cost. But 143TB/month is
| around 500Mbps. If they were to buy it themselves, at the
| time, it would have been around 500$/month at most. Of
| course, if you use a CDN/cloud, you pay the extra costs
| around such a service.
| [deleted]
| busymom0 wrote:
| This was around April 18, 2016, when Unsplash was relatively
| new (Founded in 2013?). I think those numbers were pretty
| good for that time.
| exikyut wrote:
| Nice news: the link in that HN article goes to
| _backstage.crew.co_ , which was 302ing to _dribbble.com_. And
| while IA didn 't save a copy of the dribbble page...
|
| ...it did save copies of the original links before they started
| 302ing. In fact, it saved across two different site
| reorganizations,
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160504110408/http://backstage....
| (backstage.crew.co)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160903203745/https://crew.co/b...
| (crew.co/backstage)
|
| Both pages are fully intact; I think the theme on the 2nd one
| is a bit nicer. (This feels like a bit of a "1st-world-
| problems" discussion, making commentary about the most
| aesthetically pleasing presentation of obscurely archived
| webpages that've officially fallen off the internet.)
| busymom0 wrote:
| I am curious about why they went with Fastly? Doesn't
| Cloudflare free tier provide caching of images? Worst case
| scenario, they could use their $20 or $200 tiers if needed?
|
| https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172516-U...
| jehb wrote:
| I'm going to instead see this as an _opportunity_ for something
| better to emerge.
|
| My biggest problem with Unsplash is that they did not use a
| standard license that would easily be compatible with a Creative
| Commons or open source licensed work. If I incorporated images
| from Unsplash, suddenly I couldn't say "you're welcome to do
| whatever you like with my work." In fact, they _used_ to use a
| CC0 license, but then changed, because other sites were copying
| them. As a user, this was a feature, not a bug.
|
| I would far prefer to see the community band together and produce
| an image sharing website with CC0 as the default license.
| Creative Commons image search right now is in need of some TLC
| from an engaged community.
| dannyw wrote:
| As a site, when you adopt a CC0-esque license, what happens is
| other sites will scrape you but not allow you to scrape in
| exchange.
|
| You start losing out on SEO rankings, and then contributors,
| and finally content. This also makes it harder to invest in
| usability features like curation and search (photo search is
| complicated!).
|
| I'd love to understand any ideas on how to create open CC0
| aggregators without the game theory seemingly stacked against
| you.
|
| (Disclosure: I work on content at Canva. We own Pexels and
| Pixabay).
| zamalek wrote:
| My earliest exposure to Unsplash was wallpaper apps, and
| that's certainly the case with many of my friends. I didn't
| even make the association between Unsplash and stock
| photography until very recently.
|
| My fiance had Giphy installed on her phone when I first met
| her, which surprised me because I considered Giphy as little
| more than a Reddit gif host. She uses a lot of reaction gifs
| in her messages.
|
| A search engine isn't the only route to your website. With
| Unsplash going down the drain, people are going to want
| wallpapers (on their phones, their browsers, and their
| desktops). You could also make an image search plugin for
| PowerPoint and GSlides. Making an aggregator is "easy," that
| stuff is hard.
| onli wrote:
| Creative Commons caused many issues in countries like Germany,
| with photographers publishing under CC with attribution clause,
| then hunting for sites using photos without or with not 100%
| correct attribution (in illegal pro-profit cooperations with
| lawyers) and suing the site owners for thousands of dollars. It
| really would have to be CC0, but even mentioning CC will raise
| a red flag for many now.
| woah wrote:
| What was illegal about what they were doing?
| onli wrote:
| The shared for-profit part of the scheme. It's one thing to
| hire a lawyer to get a license respected, it's another to
| institute to what amounts to a fraud scheme: Publish images
| with as hidden license requirements as possible, "hire" a
| lawyer for free with a profit sharing agreement, then sue
| who you can. That profit sharing agreement is illegal here,
| but hard to prove, and the Abmahnindustrie is actively
| protected by politicians (many of which are lawyers, pure
| coincidence of course).
|
| _Edit:_ When they send in that notice (die Abmahnung) they
| will ask for money for incurred costs. Since they did not
| pay anything in advance - the lawyer worked for free -
| there were no costs. That 's not legal here.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Publish images with as hidden license requirements as
| possible
|
| What exactly was going on? Have they published images in
| misleading way?
|
| Or is it case of going after people who published images
| with "source: Internet"? Or case of attacking people who
| made honest effort to attribute author?
|
| Because I am familiar with big corporations using freely
| licensed work and ignoring attribution requirements. For
| example Facebook is displaying map using OpenStreetMap
| data. OpenStreetMap license requires a clear attribution,
| visible to all users (
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright ).
|
| Facebook is ignoring that, Facebook employees claimed to
| be working on improvements, nothing was improved -
| attribution is still cleverly hidden.
|
| The same with for example Snapchat.
| onli wrote:
| No, wrong target - big enterprises have lawyers of their
| own. The target goal here is the 13 year old that
| published a fan page on neocities. He won't defend
| himself, the parents will pay, and that the claimed image
| licensing costs are way higher than what usually can be
| claimed in such a situation they will not notice.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| If there are sources confirming targeting such cases as
| "13 year old that published a fan page on neocities" then
| I can become outraged.
|
| But for all what I know they could be targeting marketing
| departments using stolen photos in ads.
| suyjuris wrote:
| To add a bit more detail: as far as I understand it (and I
| am no lawyer) the concept of an Abmahnung is that you
| notify someone of their (supposed) legal transgression, and
| give them the option to stop their behaviour and reimburse
| your costs (lawyer's fees and damages) to avoid going to
| court. For copyright claims in particular, it may be
| difficult to claim large damages, but sometimes the right
| holders collude with their lawyers by demanding the
| reimbursement of non-existent fees instead, which they then
| split as profits. This is illegal, as you are only allowed
| to claim costs that you have actually paid.
|
| A (somewhat dated) example at [1] (german).
|
| [1]
| https://www.lawblog.de/archives/2009/11/17/abmahnanwalte-
| ver...
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > hunting for sites using photos without or with not 100%
| correct attribution
|
| I do not see what is wrong about this part (other than the
| illegal(?) nexus with lawyers). CC licences still have to be
| complied with (or the user can contact the copyright holder
| for an alternative licence).
|
| GPL infringers have been taken to court as well, and a legal,
| for-profit litigation initiative might be a good incentive
| that encourages compliance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation
| growt wrote:
| Those guys were only publishing under the CC license to
| make a profit (by lawyer/court). I think thats wrong to
| abuse the CC license for profit this way.
|
| Another detail of that scheme: Wikipedia actually does not
| do (correct) attribution on their site (no attribution next
| to the images. So if you mirror/copy Wikipedia content, in
| germany you will be sued by "photographers" who won't
| enforce their attribution on wikipedia but will on your
| site (to make a profit, see above).
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you have JavaScript enabled, attribution is displayed
| when you view the full-size image.
|
| If you don't have JavaScript enabled, it's still
| displayed when you view the full-size image, but it loads
| a different page to do so.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Is it technically legal to show thumbnails without
| attribution?
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Wikipedia actually does not do (correct) attribution on
| their site (no attribution next to the images.
|
| More recent versions like CC-BY-SA 4.0[1] explicitly say
| that it may be reasonable to attribute via a hyperlink.
|
| Older licence versions do not have this line, but even
| then, it could be argued that Wikipedia itself is not
| infringing because attribution is still provided as part
| of the same work (considering the whole of the German
| Wikipedia as the work), rather than on an external site.
|
| Unless German courts have already ruled that attribution
| has to be next to the image?
|
| 1. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
| sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a...
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Since I've been victim of this practice, let me elaborate:
|
| There are individuals in Germany (two photographers IIRC)
| who upload photos to the Wikipedia. The licence is always
| CC with attribution, but that part is badly presented on
| Wiki (or was). Next thing, they wait for people to use
| their images and go around to sue everyone who doesn't
| display the attribution string alongside the image. It is
| just predatory behavior. They guy sent me an E-Mail with an
| pay early option. Their claims are also this weak, that the
| guy trying to pull this off with me was instantly silenced
| after our lawyer sent him a single letter.
| Igelau wrote:
| > The licence ... is badly presented on Wiki
|
| Maybe don't pull images from Wikipedia for exactly this
| reason?
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| I'm all for attribution in this case it was basically
| user generated content. We deployed measures to avoid
| this in the future afterwards, nonetheless I still think
| the practice is predatory. If I had ripped some artist
| off his hard work, sure. But not naming the photographer
| of an half-assed picture submitted to an article with
| close to zero traffic, in order to lure some people into
| copying the picture for your own profit is just shady.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Hmm, the text of the Creative Commons license is such
| that I would think such suits would be unsuccessful in
| court. Specifically, it has a section about reinstating
| your rights if you fix a violation of the license after
| you are notified. Has this ever been litigated? Of course
| receiving a demand letter is still a nuisance.
|
| If this is a problem that you have knowledge about, have
| you ever considered contacting Creative Commons about
| this? They could perhaps provide legal guidance or even
| modify the next version of the license (if there is a
| next version).
| growt wrote:
| I actually was sued over this exact thing and lost (and
| paid quite a bit of money). All for a little UI
| experiment that nobody saw but me, google and (via google
| image search) these vultures.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| So you were copying somebody else's work for free,
| without even giving them the attribution they ask for as-
| and THEY are the vultures?
| growt wrote:
| Read the grand parent comment for the practice I was
| referring to. Or are you just trolling?
| zucker42 wrote:
| Wow really, that's a pretty big problem. Which country?
| growt wrote:
| Germany
| growt wrote:
| And Wikipedia doesn't want to change the missing
| attribution and "hidden" license for their images. I
| guess some of those participating in that scheme are
| active wikipedians and lobbying to keep things as they
| are.
| onli wrote:
| There are many ways to go about this. Using the one that
| causes monetary harm and disincentives everyone to even
| consider hosting a site is not the ethical option to pick,
| but it's the one that is profitable in the short term. It's
| not like they couldn't just ask first to respect the
| license, but this isn't about respecting the license, it's
| about generating an income.
| dbrgn wrote:
| CC0 (with a zero, without the -BY part) is equivalent to
| public domain. I don't see how it would allow for the German
| popular sport of "Abmahnen" (threatening to sue). The reason
| it exists is that not all jurisdictions have a concept of
| public domain.
|
| But yes, of course, if you use pictures under a CC-BY-*
| license, then you must comply with the terms (including
| attribution).
| onli wrote:
| It's still called CC. I am aware of the licenses and their
| requirements, others who hear about the active scam will
| only see CC license and be alarmed. That's all I wrote
| above.
| minxomat wrote:
| CC0 is the norm on Pexels (based in Germany). It adds a
| clause to forbid reselling on other sites, but that's it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That's not CC0, and is not even a free content license.
| "Right to fork" is integral to any definition of free/open
| content.
| rvz wrote:
| A big day for the VCs. For everyone else using unsplash, get
| ready for a giant price hike.
| css wrote:
| I was a contributor [0] to their second batch of photos (the
| first with user-generated content) when they initially launched
| under the name Ooomf because I love the philosophy of open-
| source. They even published an open-source photography book [1],
| which I was featured in [2]. It is very cool to stumble across my
| images across the web.
|
| The initial model was to receive a handful of user-generated
| photos, then handpick 10 each week and feature them [3]. I don't
| even see this feature page anymore.
|
| However, we all know that once you sell, you lose control of the
| product. While on day one the service will still exist, I doubt
| it will be around with its current philosophy for much longer,
| especially since Getty has already stolen all my images from
| 500px that do not have people (so they can sell them without
| releases).
|
| [0]: https://unsplash.com/@css
|
| [1]: https://book.unsplash.com/
|
| [2]: https://unsplash.com/photos/bSmKli4OTIY
|
| [3]: https://unsplash.com/collections/5/collection-%235%3A-crew
| liveoneggs wrote:
| what were the license terms of the upload?
| css wrote:
| https://unsplash.com/license
| rchowe wrote:
| Unsplash has a great product, however for Getty this seems to be
| a good deal more because they eliminate a competitor than because
| they acquire a good product/team.
|
| I read that Unsplash's plan to monetize was to sell banner ads
| and branded image placement, but that's gotta make less money
| than Getty slapping their normal business model onto Unsplash,
| right?
| jiofih wrote:
| > this is not one of those acquisitions
|
| > will continue to operate as a stand-alone business
|
| Sounds funny after you read the exact same words for the 17th
| time!
| toyg wrote:
| OurIncredibleJourney.jpg
| kalleboo wrote:
| https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com
| sarabad2021 wrote:
| RIP. I'm sure this acquisition will be great for the team but
| it's pretty obvious Getty will fill the site with tricky
| sponsored images. They will also likely start fading out new free
| images until the site is mostly stale or filled with sponsored
| image links. I could also see them playing around with image
| licensing so it's less obvious how you can use them. Welp, I
| guess there's always Pexels.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| "it's pretty obvious Getty will fill the site with tricky
| sponsored images"
|
| That is literally Unsplash's current business model already
| busymom0 wrote:
| They already have tricky sponsored images on their site. Also
| their "Brands" ads:
|
| https://unsplash.com/brands
| xNeil wrote:
| I just use https://search.creativecommons.org.
|
| Any photo I want/need is available, and I already clearly know
| the license. Unsplash etc. are good, but this is solid.
| scopio wrote:
| I am the CEO at Scopio, www.scop.io/submit the most diverse
| photographer community. Visit us and join us. You can also see us
| on @scopioimages. We have the most talented artists in 150
| countries and people get paid and build their network and
| careers. A real community for the underdog. Tons of perks and
| other opps once in.
| wunderflix wrote:
| Alternatives that I have been using:
|
| - https://stocksnap.io
|
| - https://www.pexels.com
| busymom0 wrote:
| Hadn't heard of https://stocksnap.io
|
| Checked them out. While their pictures are less "professional"
| looking, I would actually prefer using them as the pics seem
| more authentic.
| asicsp wrote:
| > _Unsplash will continue to operate as a standalone brand_
|
| I hope this means that their current free offerings will
| continue.
|
| https://www.pexels.com/ also offers similar free collections.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Also https://pixabay.com.
| ncphil wrote:
| +1 that.
| silvi9 wrote:
| I'm very worried about this, as I've been using Unsplash's images
| for a lot of my blog posts. I'm just wondering how this will
| affect users of Unsplash's images in the long-term? Will we have
| to take down all our content that makes use of Unsplash imagery,
| in case Getty places a new license on the images or requires a
| fee to use the images? Or will they stay free? It's so hard to
| predict what will happen now that this acquisition has taken
| place. Unsplash was too good to be true, and now their time has
| come.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Noooooo..... good-bye to Unsplash being a good site. Maybe it's
| just not a sustainable site, but I'm certainly sad to see it go.
| kmclean wrote:
| > This is not one of those tech acquisitions where the company is
| bought to be shut down.
|
| I'll believe it when I see it. I didn't know there was any other
| kind of tech acquisition.
| machawinka wrote:
| Getty Images is the same old crony capitalism at its worse. Sad
| day for the Internet. RIP.
| blunte wrote:
| Fortunately there are a lot of people who travel, and modern
| phones take remarkably good photos easily. The biggest
| immediate impact the "photographer" has is on framing the shot;
| but with high res images and you being willing to crop, you can
| do half of that job yourself.
|
| So there should be another to replace Unsplash. And if the
| founders can guess on being acquired in a few years, then this
| isn't a bad plan.
| robertlf wrote:
| This is definitely a monopoly. Look at any image and chances are
| it comes from Getty. I'd like to see anti-trust investigations
| here.
| branon wrote:
| Wasn't Getty responsible for the removal of direct links from
| Google Images?
|
| As always, with stuff like this: doesn't bode well, hope they
| don't screw it up, but my expectations are low.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Apologies if it's super obvious to the rest of the people here,
| but I cannot for the life of me figure out what Unsplash offers?
| It's not at all clear from the website, at least to me. Not
| intended as an attack, more as a PSA to make your purpose
| extremely obvious for the dumb people like me :)
| shdon wrote:
| They launched in 2013 as a website for high quality copyright-
| and royalty-free images. The license has changed a few times,
| which is unfortunate.
|
| There is a bit more on their "about" page (which is hidden in
| the three-dots-menu) at https://unsplash.com/about
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Ooooh that's why I couldn't find it, thanks!
| masona wrote:
| Getty already offers free images through embeddable content as
| well as brand partnerships, so it's natural for them to want a
| fresh injection of great work. Especially since their library has
| been rather stale for so long. It's hard to keep nice pictures
| coming in when photographers are getting royalty statements of
| only pennies. Of course, that's still more than Unsplash
| photographers receive. It will be interesting to see how Getty
| leverages this new model of 'images as ad network.'
|
| The Unsplash dashboard features the number of image
| views/downloads very prominently and artists treat it as a kind
| of cachet. An image with 100,000 views at $2.00 CPM is what,
| $200? It's strange to me that photographers brag about their view
| counts when it's plain evidence of how much the company is making
| off their shadow labor. Credit to the Unsplash team for taking
| this dissonance to its apex - it really did require a new way of
| viewing images as assets that hadn't exist before. I'm hopeful
| that they can bring that kind of thinking to Getty. I'm not that
| hopeful that any photographer benefits from this new partnership.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> ... I'm excited about this acquisition ... because it's not
| goodbye, it's about acceleration
|
| >> This is not one of those tech acquisitions where the company
| is bought to be shut down. Unsplash will continue to operate as a
| standalone brand and division of Getty Images.
|
| >> Will Unsplash remain an independent brand?
|
| Yes.
|
| HAHA! You can't intentionally write parody this good! Just like
| every teenager swears they'll be nothing like their parents,
| every acquired startup swears nothing will change and their
| independence is preserved; why did you make a massive change to
| keep everything the same? Do you think Getty wants something for
| those bags of money they just handed you?
|
| I'm not against acquisitions, on the contrary. I just expect
| everyone, including the author, to acknowledge that this sort of
| post is solely to allay their conscience, not that of staff or
| customers. Funny enough the same hubris is probably what aided
| their success in the first place...
| Igelau wrote:
| No one actually thinks that. Mad Libs Press Releases just has
| that wording baked in.
| dbrgn wrote:
| This reminds me of 500px. I used to be a huge fan of 500px. It
| was the most beautiful photography site on the internet, designed
| with attention to every tiny detail. It allowed you to share your
| photos under a CC license, presented them beautifully and had
| fantastic curated feeds with photos by fantastic photographers.
|
| In 2018 they were acquired by an investor company and partnered
| exclusively with Getty. As a contributor, you were now pushed to
| "earn money with your pictures", CC licenses were discouraged and
| (I think) eventually removed. The site stopped getting optimized
| for aesthetics, it was now getting optimized for selling stock
| photos. I deleted all my photos and left.
|
| I hope this doesn't happen to Unsplash. But I'm not optimistic.
| teryyy wrote:
| https://www.pexels.com/ is another similar site, owned by Canva
| which seems to have kept its quality through the years.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Someone mentioned yet another alternative which I have used
| previously but had completely forgotten
|
| https://pixabay.com
| sdoering wrote:
| I switched to pixabay from unsplash when looking for stock
| images for presentations. Nowadays I nearly never use
| unsplash. Maybe because I don't look for landscape that
| much.
|
| Because unsplash actually made my desktop backgrounds look
| good.
| minxomat wrote:
| Pexels is the best community for people who want to share
| their photos/videos (CC0). It's the worst community for
| monetising that in any way.
| dbrgn wrote:
| > It's the worst community for monetising that in any way.
|
| That sounds fantastic, I'll take a look!
|
| Edit: It's not CC0 though, right? The Pexels License looks
| similar to the Unsplash License.
| dannyw wrote:
| (Disclosure: I work for Canva)
|
| You are allowed to do anything with Pexels photos, except
| 4 conditions listed on the plain English licensing page:
| https://www.pexels.com/license/
|
| In short, * don't portray identifiable people in a bad
| way * don't sell unaltered, make a change first * don't
| imply endorsement * don't redistribute on other sites.
|
| Commercial use is perfectly fine. You don't need to
| attribute, but our photographers (and we) prefer it.
| rustc wrote:
| Actual answer for GP: no, it's not CC0.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| > don't portray identifiable people in a bad way
|
| Not a lawyer, but this is so arbitrary that any sensible
| company wouldn't touch Pexels. What is considered bad? If
| the person is put next to some junk food? Cigarettes? An
| abortion clinic ad? Oil company?
|
| This is the same issue with the No Evil license: https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...
| nitrogen wrote:
| If you really need a picture of a human, you could
| just...get that person's permission instead of whining
| about free not being "free."
| busymom0 wrote:
| I don't see it as whining. These companies are in the
| business of providing photos for people to be able to
| use. If their TOS is so vague that one simply cannot use
| any photos without knowing what the TOS allows or not -
| then the core purpose of the company has failed.
|
| If FB and others are to be used as an example, these TOS
| are written vague and broad on purpose.
| moeedm wrote:
| That's the business of stock photos. Unsplash managed to stick
| around because they provided free high quality images that were
| more "real" looking than stock photos. It was supported by ads,
| which I'm sure kept the site running but when Getty knocks on
| your door and offers to buy you out ... it's hard to say no.
|
| The cycle will continue. In its place there will be a new
| Unsplash which will offer the same + a bit more until it gets
| bought out too.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Reading through the press release, this really stood out:
|
| > In 2016, we first met the Getty Images team. We weren't sure
| they would see the world the same way we did given their
| business was largely built on licensing. Over years of
| conversations, however, we learned about the level of respect
| they had for the Unsplash community and the rights of creators
| to choose how and where their imagery is made available.
|
| While this is written as though they had initially
| misunderstood Getty, it doesn't clarify at all how things have
| evolved. My unvarnished reading is "We were worried about Getty
| because they're all about copyright, but after talking for
| years, we've learned they're really all about copyright."
|
| After reading this, I think your lack of optimism is warranted.
| tertius wrote:
| > "We were worried about Getty because they're all about
| copyright, but after talking for years and waiting for our
| daily uniques to grow, they've agreed to our terms re:
| valuation."
|
| FIFY
| fastball wrote:
| > "We were worried that selling are souls to the copyright
| czars would not be worth it, but after eating in to their
| business for years they've finally made us an offer we
| can't refuse."
| ljm wrote:
| The cynic in me says that they were just beaten into
| submission and after 5 years they said 'fuck it', because
| they weren't getting any better offers.
| mwambua wrote:
| > the rights of creators to choose how and where their
| imagery is made available
|
| I didn't know that there's any way to control where the
| images show up. Isn't it just a free-for-all on Unsplash?
| benatkin wrote:
| It was when I read this that I thought of Elsevier.
|
| I'm not sure why I thought of them right then. I suppose
| the connection was forming in my mind while I was reading
| the preceding sentences. Going to elsevier.com I see this
| though:
|
| "How Elsevier supports Open Access"
|
| We're not bad, we're just misunderstood!
| lovedswain wrote:
| The quoted paragraph reminds me of something I once read from
| a blog post by the WhatsApp team
| pferde wrote:
| pixelfed.org is another great platform - and it's powered by
| ActivityPub, so you can host your own and federate it with
| others.
| tomcooks wrote:
| If only the server wasn't as demanding, it's a beautiful
| project and there are plenty of clients that experience-wise
| are similar to Instagram
| dbrgn wrote:
| I can warmly recommend Pixelfed, it would be great to get
| some talented photographers on board.
|
| However, it's more like Instagram and not really suited for
| uploading a high-quality high-resolution portfolio. It's also
| not really suited for finding photos for a project.
| postit wrote:
| Sad to hear. I just deleted all my photos from there and closed
| my account.
| pmlnr wrote:
| 500px also disabled it's API when this happened.
| passivate wrote:
| IMHO, it is hard to run a sustainable business around sharing
| pictures.
| Boltgolt wrote:
| And then there's Instagram, who only did square photos and
| nothing else for years
| goldenchrome wrote:
| I think you're misrepresenting Instagram. Instagram is a
| personal PR platform where images are the primary vehicle.
| In that sense Instagram is closer to Twitter (text-based PR
| dissemination) than Unsplash.
| dalbasal wrote:
| To me, this feels like such a new/old media clash point.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It just reaffirms that one should not put all money on one
| horse, and to keep a copy of all of your work under your own
| management. With photography that's manageable, with e.g.
| youtube that can become challenging if you're a prolific video
| maker (especially nowadays with 4K, even 8K video footage).
|
| Anyway, always have an exit.
| etrautmann wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow? Storing a rendered final copy of your
| work is not prohibitively expensive given the cost of local
| storage, and is small in comparison to the raw footage which
| most creators presumably don't just delete?
| michaelt wrote:
| For a lot of casual photographers, the version on their
| phone is the original and the version in the cloud is the
| backup. And if they run out of space on their phone, they
| delete the original.
|
| Of course, to professional and semi-professional
| photographers, such a haphazard approach would be
| unimaginable :)
| anthropodie wrote:
| I am guessing OP is not referring to images per se but
| platform. For example, if you have all your 10K followers
| only on Instagram, you should definitely have exit like
| owning your own blog. Your followers should at least have a
| place to find you in case you loose access to Instagram for
| some reason.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Oh man, 500px used to be amazing. The photos were just
| beautiful. As you say, it died at some point (the quality
| started declining and they pushed some user-hostile stuff) and
| I never went back.
| swyx wrote:
| does anyone have any guesstimates about their business side of
| things? i know they raised a series A focused on crypto
| (https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/unsplash-simple-token-seri...)
| but ironically they seem to have completely missed out on this
| NFT wave.
|
| serving up that many images every day is costly. im guessing they
| ran out of money.
| polyrand wrote:
| They also did a FAQs page about it:
|
| https://help.unsplash.com/en/articles/5097983-unsplash-getty...
| latexr wrote:
| Saving that to the Internet Archive[1]. Let's revisit in a few
| years.
|
| [1]:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210330134914/https://help.unspl...
| munificent wrote:
| I was wondering what Unsplash's business model was, and I
| stumbled onto [1]:
|
| _> Nor is it going to slap banner ads on every page of its
| website. Yes, it's unveiling a digital advertising business, but
| Unsplash is taking a specific approach -- working with companies
| to create branded photos, which will then appear on desirable
| searches._
|
| _> Square, for example, could upload photos of the Square
| Register, which will then show up when Unsplash users search for
| "cash register" and other terms._
|
| _> Brands working with Unsplash will get prominent placement in
| relevant searches, as well as their own brand channel, but Cho
| said the real impact only begins on the Unsplash website._
|
| So basically, without you realizing it, you may end up with paid
| product placement in your presentations and (pointless) header
| images on your Medium articles.
|
| Sometimes I wonder of the answer to the Fermi Paradox and the
| Great Filter is: eventually all alien civilizations end up
| converting their entire society and economy into advertising
| monetization, all corporations consolidate into one giant inert
| behemoth, all real progress stops, and the species converts its
| entire planet into fuel for AdCoin cryptomining and winks out of
| existence.
|
| I miss the days where people just, like, started businesses that
| charged people for stuff, and people bought that stuff, and the
| business stayed in business without having to be acquired or
| snuffed out by a megacorp.
|
| [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/unsplash-for-brands/
| daxterspeed wrote:
| The whole brands aspect has really confused me. If you search
| for "nature" on unsplash right now the first result is a
| picture of a person prominently holding a product in the most
| blatant product placement way possible. So far they're
| basically working as banner ads, no sensible user would ever
| want to use a sponsored photo for their work.
|
| I'm more afraid of how they'll modify their existing products
| to manipulate users into paying for "Premium" Getty stock
| photos over the free Unsplash ones :/
| Igelau wrote:
| This was no mystery. I'm pretty sure I saw a giant photo of a
| Coke bottle on Unsplash not that long ago. It has plenty of
| corporate users, and not in some secret shill sense, in a "This
| post from Docusign" kind of way.
| [deleted]
| josefresco wrote:
| I've lived/worked through Getty's purchase and destruction of
| iStock. I'm not eager to watch Unsplash suffer the same fate. RIP
| to another great service.
| voisin wrote:
| I am unclear why Getty Images would be interested, unless the
| purchase price was less than the cost of internally building its
| own loss leader open source image site that allows them to try to
| upsell to "premium" photos.
|
| Users have limited loyalty to any particular source of "free".
| Getty presumably has a far larger library from which to pull
| images, so there can't be any advantage to Unsplash's library.
|
| I am guessing it was a very low purchase price.
| petercooper wrote:
| This article from 2019 might provide some clues:
| https://www.chron.com/business/texas-inc/article/Getty-Image...
|
| It seems that one of Getty's biggest problems is that the
| variety of fresh imagery their customers expect Getty to have
| to hand has shot up while revenues have grown more modestly.
| Maybe Unsplash's library and base of contributors will actually
| provide some value in the long tail for their existing
| customers.. and it might be possible for them to offer that
| extended library to customers with existing packages without
| them really caring where it came from or that they could get it
| cheaper elsewhere.
| toyg wrote:
| Pretty inevitable, it was actually surprising how long it lasted.
| Somebody gotta pay for that bandwidth.
| IceWreck wrote:
| They cant change the license of existing stuff right ? RIP.
| haxiomic wrote:
| My main association with Getty is their 'copyfraud' practises
| where they claim public domain images (NASA, Library of Congress
| etc) as their own and sell licenses[0]. They're also well known
| for aggressive acquisitions[1]. Perhaps this a good time to
| create a mirror
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Images#Claiming_copyrigh...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Images#Acquisitions
| ud_0 wrote:
| Based on this behavior, my paranoid side is expecting a wave of
| copyright notices and invoices being sent to every single site
| that is using Unsplash images right now.
| dhimes wrote:
| Hopefully they won't be able to revoke rights already
| given...
| z77dj3kl wrote:
| They can't, but they can attempt copyfraud as they seem to
| already be doing, see the aforementioned wiki article and
| public domain NASA/LoC images.
| rustc wrote:
| > Perhaps this a good time to create a mirror
|
| Creating a mirror is forbidden by Unsplash's license.
|
| I wonder if there are any actually CC0/Public Domain image
| sites left anymore?
| klenwell wrote:
| Regarding Getty's "aggressive acquisitions", some interesting
| background turned up in this recent NY Times obit for Daniel
| Wolf:
|
| _Daniel Wolf pulled off what may have been the greatest legal
| art caper of all time: Over the course of two years in the
| early 1980s, he quietly amassed some 25,000 classic and
| contemporary photographs, buying them from the world's most
| renowned collectors on behalf of his client the J. Paul Getty
| Museum in Los Angeles.
|
| He was so secretive that none of the sellers knew about the
| others, or about their buyer -- a stealthiness that allowed
| him, and the Getty, to pay about $17 million, "less than the
| price of a moderately good Cezanne still life," said John
| Walsh, the director of the Getty at the time, in an interview
| with The Los Angeles Times.
|
| ...
|
| But nothing made quite as big a splash as the Getty
| acquisition. It not only gave an institutional imprimatur to
| collecting photography; it also soaked up a sizable chunk of
| supply, making the remaining works on the market much more
| valuable.
|
| "Suddenly, absolutely overnight, 25,000 of the rarest
| photographs ever taken were off the market," said Weston Naef,
| who helped Mr. Wolf plan the acquisition for the Getty and
| later became its first curator of photography. "It would be
| like someone removing half the gold from Fort Knox."_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/arts/daniel-wolf-dead.htm...
| rdhatt wrote:
| That is a different entity than Getty Images.
|
| https://www.getty.edu/research/library/faq.html#gettyimages
|
| > No, Getty Images has no relationship to the J. Paul Getty
| Trust.
|
| The "Getty" name derived from the same person, but the museum
| and Getty Images have nothing do with each other.
| opencl wrote:
| To be more precise, Mark Getty of Getty Images is J. Paul
| Getty's grandson.
|
| Some of the initial investments in Getty Images came from
| other members of the Getty family (who had inherited
| probably quite a lot of money from J. Paul) but that seems
| to be the extent of the relationship.
| mfsch wrote:
| Careful about creating mirrors, the Unsplash license [1]
| explicitly disallows "compiling photos from Unsplash to
| replicate a similar or competing service".
|
| [1]: https://unsplash.com/license
| haxiomic wrote:
| Indeed, if you're putting something up online you probably
| just want to make it easy for users to switch rather than
| reuploading
|
| Offline personal archives and tools to create them I expect
| are permissible (IANAL)
| cvaidya1986 wrote:
| Congratulations to the unsplash team!!
| yeswecatan wrote:
| What makes Unsplash so special? I've browsed it in the past and
| yea, it has some really nice pictures. Why would artists post
| their work (for free) there instead of another site?
| lovegoblin wrote:
| Why do people contribute to open source?
| yeswecatan wrote:
| Ok, so there isn't necessarily some secret sauce with
| Unsplash. If it all goes south after the acquisition, there's
| opportunity for a new one.
| sneak wrote:
| Quick, pull the non-rate-limited API keys out of the unsplash
| desktop app with strings and start mirroring it from Tor (which
| they don't block).
|
| The images are public domain.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > This is not one of those tech acquisitions where the company is
| bought to be shut down.
|
| Translation: This is one of those tech acquisitions where the
| company is bought to be shut down.
|
| I wonder if it sounds as ridiculous to the one writing it as it
| does to someone reading.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| This is terrible news for end users.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I could imagine tightening collaboration with Getty which could
| make sense, but once you let somebody acquire you, the game is
| over. No promise can hold.
|
| Can someone link me a list acquisition promises that new owners
| of various businesses broke in the past? There must be one.
| jamix wrote:
| https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
| momothereal wrote:
| The WhatsApp acquisition comes to mind:
|
| 1. Promise to not hoard and sell user data:
| https://blog.whatsapp.com/why-we-don-t-sell-ads
|
| 2. Get acquired by arguably the largest ad network and data
| hoarding giant
|
| 3. Proceed to flow user data to FB, forcing it down the throat
| of all their users
| [deleted]
| leowinterde wrote:
| RIP. Time to leave unsplash
| blunte wrote:
| You won't have to leave them, as within a year there will be
| nothing recognizable to leave. It will have been replaced with
| free content wrapped in a bow and pricetag, or simply the best
| free content redirecting to similar paid content.
| subpixel wrote:
| What ever happened to their association with OST and micro crypto
| payments?
| hobofan wrote:
| AFAIK OST is no more, and the company behind them pivoted to
| make an online fitness course portal[0]. I think there are some
| projects that were building things using their OpenST framework
| and continue to use that.
|
| [0]https://moxie.xyz/
| krm01 wrote:
| Very curious :Any info on what there revenue was? From what I've
| read/seen they were experimenting with a bunch of methods, but
| nothing seemed to really work (could be wrong). How much did they
| get acquired for?
| solmag wrote:
| It's going to turn out bad. Great site for now.
| psing wrote:
| Good for the Unsplash team. I've used their images on a bunch of
| my content. It's a great resource!
| damsta wrote:
| We knew it would happen and with the bills they had to pay each
| month I understand the decision. I just wish Unsplash will not
| become another item on a list of services Getty killed/made
| worse.
| robinhood wrote:
| Good for Unsplash, sad for the community.
| maaarghk wrote:
| Somewhat reminds me of Facebook and Whatsapp
| abhiminator wrote:
| Absolutely. Came here to say this.
|
| Remember back in 2014 when Mark Zuckerberg promised that
| WhatsApp will function as a standalone app, completely
| sandboxed from the rest of the Facebook ecosystem?
|
| That didn't happen, did it?
| kirillzubovsky wrote:
| If you still want to upload your awesome shots to a community
| that might use them for their projects, I highly recommend
| Creative Market (https://creativemarket.com/kirill).
|
| Started uploading photos there a few years ago, and I still get a
| payment every few months.
|
| You don't have to charge a lot for your photos, but this way it's
| something to keep you/site going, while also sharing what you
| have with the world.
| apercu wrote:
| Because of course it is.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > After interacting with the team at Getty Images more and better
| understanding their long-term vision, we realized we shared so
| much alignment that going at this together could be much more
| impactful than going at it separately.
|
| Of course they will say that now, but isn't Unsplash a direct
| threat to Getty's bottom line?
|
| Unsplash images are free for commercial and non-commercial
| purposes with no permission needed. The only limitation is that
| you can't sell them or start a competing service.
|
| How long before this changes?
| achow wrote:
| Absolutely. This is a dark day for 'open source' images.
| projectileboy wrote:
| It's hard to find examples of acquisitions that were good for
| the customers or the employees.
| dhimes wrote:
| I with you here. I love Unsplash- but I'm afraid it's doomed
| now.
| endantwit wrote:
| (Almost every website that features free images already also
| shows ads from websites like Getty Images and iStockphoto.)
|
| I can also see it happen that Unsplash remains free forever,
| but that it will be used to lead more people to Getty Images.
| And that's very understandable from a Getty Images point of
| view, right?
| ludamad wrote:
| The nervous thing is that it would need to constantly defend
| its ROI to survive
| weego wrote:
| My guess would be that unsplash will start adding source file
| size limits (that can unlocked with a Getty account) and long
| term quality and quantity will stagnate as its used as an
| acquisition funnel for their paid services
| dbrgn wrote:
| I recently started uploading pictures to Unsplash. I'm not sure
| I'll continue with that.
| dazc wrote:
| Won't be long before they are Getty's images and not yours -
| or maybe I'm cynical?
| petercooper wrote:
| _Unsplash images are free for commercial and non-commercial
| purposes with no permission needed. The only limitation is that
| you can 't sell them or start a competing service._
|
| My theory is Getty is really paying for the right to sell them.
| Getty has a lot of very large customers who pay for access to
| their libraries and adding a new substantial library to their
| plans could benefit them.
|
| I'm thinking it's a bit like when AWS takes something like
| MongoDB and rolls out DocumentDB.. there are companies who are
| so entrenched with their AWS accounts that it seems more
| appealing than dealing with the hassle of opening a separate
| account and doing all 'the legal' for another service, even if
| it's free/cheaper. If a large agency or institution has a
| process around Getty and the way they assign rights and manage
| licenses, maybe they'll happily pay for the Unsplash library
| from Getty even if they could get it free separately(?)
| dazc wrote:
| 'How long before this changes?'
|
| I'd guess it will be a gradual process that starts with a
| constant nag that you can find more and better images if only
| you hand over your card details.
|
| Ultimately, it will be just another Getty brand.
| james-bcn wrote:
| Yep. I used to love istockphoto before Getty purchased it and
| slowly eliminated it. The same will happen to Unsplash.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| I have been browsing Unsplash for five or six years now. I
| remember the time when it did not have ads to the how it is now.
| I understand the owner might not have been earning a lot from the
| site, so I get that he wanted to cash out. I just hope that the
| content remains of high quality and open source if possible.
| JackPoach wrote:
| They can't change licensing for images that are already in use
| under Unsplash current agreement, can they?
| blunte wrote:
| Whether they can or not is less relevant. Getty has already
| demonstrated that it is willing to sell free works to people
| who don't realize they can get it for free (legally). I'm not
| even talking about where they take other people's works and
| illegally resell it as their own...
|
| Getty, if judged by their past behaviors, is an evil company.
| dpwm wrote:
| > Getty has already demonstrated that it is willing to sell
| free works to people who don't realize they can get it for
| free (legally).
|
| It seems plausible to me that there are some customers whose
| legal teams would be very uneasy about anything free.
|
| For those customers, Getty's name and "reputability" may be
| the service they are paying for.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Assuming appropriate licensing, I have no idea why a legal
| team would be uneasy about using something free. Can you
| elaborate?
| amelius wrote:
| Does anybody have a torrent of their free content before it is
| too late?
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| Has anyone made a complete archive of Unsplash, so that at least
| when Getty shut it down ("in order to serve customers metter by
| focusing on our core business") the images that have already been
| uploaded there will remain available?
| HajiraSifre wrote:
| I think The Eye did archive it at some point.
|
| Also, it might be hard to find a scraper, since Unsplash likes
| (or at least liked) sending "friendly" requests to authors of
| scrapers on GitHub to remove their repos.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Excellent idea. I'd be curious to see what the current
| compressed database size is... Their (wonderful and brief)
| license does prohibits "the right to compile photos from
| Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service", so this
| would have to be a personal archive.
| preommr wrote:
| Potentially unpopular opinion: Good.
|
| I am tired of people just putting large images into their
| websites where the main image is barely relevant to the rest of
| the page. It was sloppy and lazy, like modern day clip art.
|
| And if someone really wants images, there are paid services like
| envato that are at least somewhat sustainable. These solutions
| are really affordable now and they've got very decent licensing
| terms.
| rchaud wrote:
| This acquisition isn't going to change that. Getty isn't going
| to slap a watermark on every Unsplash image overnight.
|
| And even if they do, people will continue using meaningless
| images as thumbnails for their Medium posts from some other
| source like Pexels.
| rriepe wrote:
| It's always been weird to me that people are _so averse_ to
| adding an extra 20kb of CSS, but they 'll drop megabytes and
| megabytes of javascript and images into their site.
| seanosaur wrote:
| > And if someone really wants images, there are paid services
| like envato that are at least somewhat sustainable. These
| solutions are really affordable now and they've got very decent
| licensing terms.
|
| Or, more likely, they'll just revert back to rips from Google
| Images. Maybe that's just the cynic in me, though.
| StavrosK wrote:
| You prefer walls of text, with nothing else?
| dingaling wrote:
| Invert the scenario: imagine a blog post with photos by the
| author, but text pasted in from Wikipedia just to space the
| photos out a bit.
|
| It's essentially the same thing.
| StavrosK wrote:
| If it's a photography blog and I came for the photos but
| there is some text just to break the monotony, I'm fine
| with that.
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