Since October 2013
Getty Images has been collecting money from Pinterest for images in its collection that have been pinned on Pinterest. The transactions appear on photographer sales reports as $0.03 gross sale and a photographer royalty of
$0.01. Indications are that this is a one-time payment no matter how long the image stays on Pinterest.
Earlier this year photographer Anne Rippy, who has been a Getty contributor for a couple decades, began checking some of her Pinterest royalties. She discovered that her photo of
Monument au Fantome by Jean Dubuffet, was still on Pinterest. Getty had paid her the $0.01 royalty on March 15, 2014.
The amazing thing is that while the images is alive and well on Pinterest it can no longer be found on gettyimages.com. Ms. Rippy never asked for it to be removed from the Getty collection, and has never been notified that Getty was deleting it. She contacted Getty over three months ago asking for an explanation, but so far no response. Guess they are busy reporting all those $0.01 sales.
If you search for Monument au Fantome on gettyimages.com you can find two Corbis images by James Leynse in the Editorial collection but no sign of Ms Rippy image that should be in the Creative collection. There is also an Archive Photo image on the Getty site of this piece of art.
When Getty did this deal with Pinterest back in 2013 they said, “Here are some of the nuts and bolts of how we will work with Pinterest: Images shared on Pinterest will be matched against the PicScout Platform registry to identify exclusive Getty Images house content. We will then provide the metadata to Pinterest for the identified images via our Connect API provided they are not pinned in the context of a licensed use (e.g. magazine cover). Identified, stand-alone content will be associated with the proper metadata, including photo credits and image numbers. In addition, we'll work with Pinterest to make sure that your images get proper attribution and include a path back to our websites, where your content can be licensed. We're working out the details on implementation of the partnership.”
The image on Pinterest has no metadata, no photo credit, no image number, no path back to Gettyimages.com.
Evidently, Getty and Pinterest have been unable to get their act together to do any of these things that were promised. But, after all, its only been two-and-a-half years. Got to give them time.
For more about this great deal for Getty check out these two previous stories
here and
here.