Getty Demanding Agencies Supply Them RM Exclusively

Sources tell me that Getty is demanding that U.S. agencies with RM images in its collection make those RM images fully exclusive through gettyimages.com. Otherwise Getty will terminate the Agreement. One theory for doing this is that Getty wants to be able to grant exclusive licenses through e-commerce sales. If Getty knows they have total control of a given image, then they would be able to grant exclusive licenses without the need to do any checking with the parent agency that represents the image to see if exclusive rights are available. This would be similar to the arrangement that Stocksy has with its photographers.