epSos-de's Journal: Getty Images is stealing Creative Commons pictures.

Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of more than 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of film footage. Mark Getty is the company's founder. Getty Images caused controversy for its aggressive pursuit of copyright enforcement on behalf of its photographers.

In reality Getty Images is stealing rights from photographers and publishers. Almost all of the pictures of epSos.de on Flickr were published under the Creative Commons license. Getty Images is licensing pictures from epSos.de through the Flickr account. After licensing the images they change the copyright from free to use to all rights reserved. It is a digital type of theft of free pictures.

The stolen picture is here:
www.flickr.com/photos/epsos/5394616925/

Flickr and Getty Images made and internal agreement to change copy rights. As a publisher on Flickr, epSos.de can not do anything to stop them from changing the license of an image. Getty Images can not have the rights of an author, because they are licensing the images themselves. They also can not have exclusive rights, because the right of an author is protected above the rights of the publishers and agencies.

The screen-shot of the digital theft is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/epsos/8138893914/

Getty Images is stealing the freedom away, because they are true fellows of the cut throat capitalism. It is an evil abuse and a clear scam in the world of stock license photography.

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