The leading stock photo agency, Getty Images, has made a bold decision to allow photos in its vast image library available for free use and posting, as long as they include the accompanying embedding code. The Getty Images library includes a wide range of stock collections, including sports, entertainment, travel, and news.

Craig Peter, Getty’s senior vice president of the business development, said anyone can now visit the site and post images for noncommercial use by embedding the HTML code for a selected image in their website. Similar to how Google allows for embedding YouTube videos on websites, embedded images will a link back to Getty Images’s licensing page and will include full copyright information.

Getty explains here how to embed their images on websites, blogs, and social media platforms. Posted images will also not include a watermark. Images cannot, of course, be used for commercial purposes such as advertising or the reselling of images.

The decision to allow free image posting stems from the wide availability of images online through simple Internet searches. Instead of trying to combat this type of access to images, Getty Images thinks it can gain more control over its media with the embedded code, which includes proper attribution.

As Peter’s told the The Verge, “if web publishers have a legal, free path to use the images, they’ll take it, opening a new revenue for Getty and photographers.”

Images available for free posting are categorized and searchable, and each includes a caption description, sizes, a link to the free embed code, and pricing for commercial use. Selected images can also be saved to a user “lightbox” for reviewing.

Source: The Verge