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Have you ever-needed specific images for something and didn’t quite know where to look?  Well my friends, the search is over as the world’s... 35 Million Getty Images Become Free To Use

Have you ever-needed specific images for something and didn’t quite know where to look?  Well my friends, the search is over as the world’s largest photo agency, Getty Images, has made a massive amount of its library free to use, in an effort to combat online piracy.

Millions of images, including famous shots of US President Barack Obama and actress Marilyn Monroe, will now be available without cost to and social media sites and blogs.  The photos will be “framed” with a code which links back to Getty’s website. Getty Images said it had made the move after coming to the conclusion that thousands of their images were being used without any acknowledgement.

Free Images

A business development executive at Getty Craig Peters, said, “Our content was everywhere already…If you want to get a Getty image today, you can find it without a watermark very simply…The way you do that is you go to one of our customer sites and you right-click. Or you go to Google Image search or Bing Image Search and you get it there. And that’s what’s happening.”

The company has said by using the new “embed tool“, the images can be shared on social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr. Getty is can make up to 35 million photos available.

People may pick from stock images, fashion shows, sports events, and celebrity images.  However, there are some exceptions, these will be primarily, editorial photos of events such as terrorist attacks.

The code, which can be cut and pasted into any website, is very similar to the tool which YouTube provides for sharing videos. The downside of the images available (depending upon your viewpoint) is that they cannot be resized and they will have a credit for the photographer and a Getty Images logo.  If the use of Getty’s library images are for commerce,  including television channels and advertisers, then that content will be charged for.

If you have any sensible comments regarding this story, please leave your comments in the section below.

[Image via showbiz411]

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26463886