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Getty Images Letter Forum / Masterfile employee: 85% of revenue comes from litigation
« on: December 09, 2010, 03:17:04 PM »
Hello,
My company recently negotiated a settlement with Masterfile under circumstances familiar to readers of this website. A question I've been pondering that has come up on this forum before is: how much revenue is Masterfile and other stock photo companies receiving from these letter campaigns? My original guesstimate was 20% of their revenue stream; It turns out I was off by a factor of 4. The key piece of information comes from a presentation given by the "copyright compliance officer" we were dealing with at Masterfile to a Canadian women's organization:
"... she threw out some statistics to illustrate the extent of the copyright nfringement problem, stating that eighty-five percent of revenue from stock photography is not garnered from legitimate deals, but collected from infringement." (See: http://www.womenenter.com/womenenter.com/M.O.M.html)
Everyone negotiating with Masterfile and others need to keep that number in mind. The person you are dealing with may call themselves a "compliance officer" but in fact they are nothing more than a salesman employing high-pressure sales tactics to get you to purchase a "retro-active licensing fee" for ridiculously over-priced images. Since such a large portion of Getty and Masterfile's revenue comes from demand letters, I would not be surprised if they pay their representatives a commission on the negotiated settlement amount.
My company recently negotiated a settlement with Masterfile under circumstances familiar to readers of this website. A question I've been pondering that has come up on this forum before is: how much revenue is Masterfile and other stock photo companies receiving from these letter campaigns? My original guesstimate was 20% of their revenue stream; It turns out I was off by a factor of 4. The key piece of information comes from a presentation given by the "copyright compliance officer" we were dealing with at Masterfile to a Canadian women's organization:
"... she threw out some statistics to illustrate the extent of the copyright nfringement problem, stating that eighty-five percent of revenue from stock photography is not garnered from legitimate deals, but collected from infringement." (See: http://www.womenenter.com/womenenter.com/M.O.M.html)
Everyone negotiating with Masterfile and others need to keep that number in mind. The person you are dealing with may call themselves a "compliance officer" but in fact they are nothing more than a salesman employing high-pressure sales tactics to get you to purchase a "retro-active licensing fee" for ridiculously over-priced images. Since such a large portion of Getty and Masterfile's revenue comes from demand letters, I would not be surprised if they pay their representatives a commission on the negotiated settlement amount.