Law blogs and free Getty Images a good fit?
“Millions of images. Free to use. Share the word.”
This from Getty Images this week when it announced the ability for people to easily embed and share its imagery – at no cost – for non-commercial use on websites, blogs and social media channels through a new embed tool.
Although Getty Images plans to get the buzz really going among bloggers and heavy social media users at SXSW over the next couple days, there was plenty of buzz among folks online this week that Getty’s move would revolutionize the use of images – especially among bloggers. Legal professionals were among those sharing the good news.
With free though comes some strings that law bloggers ought to find disconcerting.
Unlike images inserted into a blog post and saved on the server hosting the blog, Getty images will be embedded on the post. The image itself will stay on Getty’s servers and Getty ultimately controls what will be displayed in the ’embed’ over time.
As pointed out by the New York Times’ Noam Cohen (@noamcohen) in an interview of Craig Peters, Getty Image’s senior vice president for business development,
By retaining control [images are served up], Getty Images could in the future take those images down, or somehow incorporate advertising.
Take the images down? Display advertising?
I can only imagine the calls we would get at LexBlog from the lawyers on our network if their images and related items in the embed started being swapped out at our discretion. Or if we started running advertising with their images – maybe law firm ads.
Not to mention privacy issues which many law firms are very sensitive to in light of the clients they represent and the position the firms need to take. This embed tool will likely track user behavior, which can be monetized through targeted advertising.
Though Getty’s Peters told The New York Times that non-commercial use would be interpreted broadly, that’s a tough standard for law firms to ride with.
No question that law blogs being used to grow relationships and reputations to grow business could be construed as commercial in nature. Bar associations and some courts have only granted a “commercial speech” standard to blogs when it came to ethics’ issues.
Imagine getting a cease and desist letter to take down a year or two’s worth of images because your blog is considered commercial. That’s not far fetched.
Peters told Business Week’s Joshua Brustein (@joshuabrustein) that embedded images will not be allowed in contexts that promote products or businesses. “That’s a pretty clear delineation. We’ll enforce the terms of this license if people start using these images to do that.”
Brian Krogsgard (@Krogsgard), points out continuing shortcomings – from the perspective of a WordPress designer and developer.
For one, the implementation is hideous. They call it striking “directly at social sharing.” I call it supremely ugly.
From the overly pronounced Getty logo, to the confusing embed icon, to the iframes for Twitter and Tumblr within the Getty iframe (yo dawg, we got iframes for your iframes), the whole thing just stinks. And the image itself permalinks to Getty’s website, of course.
And yeah, it’s not responsive. Somebody needs to get fit-images on this, quick.
Below is the implantation Krogsgard’s referring to. I am not a fan of the Getty Logo but it’s not a make it or break it for me. The image not being responsive is.
Many law blogs (mine included) will be moving to responsive design so they’re effectively and eloquently displayed on mobile. Non-responsive images, which these embeds would be, would “break out” of the display, sticking outside the frame of the text on a blog.
Getty Image’s business model here makes some sense. Monetize your portfolio of millions of images, protect the rights of photographers, create a revenue stream for photographers by showcasing their work, and do it following the YouTube model.
But for now, as a law blogger, I’d go slow on Getty Images. If you’re publishing a hobby blog, go for it.
For more insight on the use of free Getty Images, check out LXBN Network member, Lindsay Griffiths (@LindsayGriffith), who blogs not to get excited about Getty Images.