Getty Images are now allowing non-commercial use of their image library for free. The images are fixed in size (as above) with the text and links below included.
They say that their photographs appear widely on the internet anyway, illegally, so at least this way the metadata (photographer’s credits and a link back to Getty) remain intact. They also might add advertising later, according to the small print, although there is no mention yet of how any revenue might be shared with the photographers.
There is no individual opt-out for Getty contributors – I wonder if this includes me, because I seem to recall allowing Flickr to pass on my images to Getty, so that they could charge for them and reward me with big money. (It hasn’t happened yet.) All my Flickr images are CC licensed anyway, so I have no problem with that, but I can see that it might be worrying for professional photographers.
I had to create a Getty account to access the “embed image” link when browsing through their library, but you can see that one of the links in the embedded image above allows for re-embedding and that can be used by anybody (with the usual token “By embedding this image, you agree to Getty Images terms of use.”).
Interesting times.