Thank you for the kind words Stinger.
As far as determining the revenue I think it would be rather hard since Getty is a private company and not required to release financials like a publicly traded company. I have searched quite extensively for their financial records and can only find them posted back before they went private after that there is nothing. The only hint I have as to the revenue that they make from their
extortion demand letters is that 2009 Los Angeles times articles where Lisa Wilmer states that they catch approximately 42,000 cases of
cha-ching infringement a year. If we take into consideration the range of what Getty's considers to quallify as their pound of flesh it seem to be on average between $850 and $1250, so let's average that to an even $1000, that leaves Getty with the potential earnings of $42 million. I would imagine with the use of Pic-Scout now they have even more.
I do not know if they send letters to the majority of the pictures they find as I'm sure some are licensed and I seriously doubt if they send their
extortion demand letters to large companies with legal staff that can defend themselves or even sue Getty, these companies probably get a C&D letter if anything. I'll tell you a figure I would be interested in finding out is what is the actual percentage that knuckle under and pay Getty.
Great letter Greg. You lay out your case quite clearly and provide lots of detail in the links.
It's interesting how with a little time and organization, the arguments of the people on the ELI forums get stronger, while Getty just appears to jabber around the same old BS.
OK, maybe they do read this forum and have cleaned up a couple of things, but really, if they wanted to stop unauthorized use of their images, they would be much farther down that road today than they are. They are just in it for the Trolling money. I wonder if there is a way to discern how much revenue they raise in trolling versus legitimate licensing?