Legal Fixation

Corbis and the rise of "microstock"

NY Times article on image licensing giant Corbis (owned by Microsoft) facing the rise of so-called microstock photo sites, e.g. iStockPhoto (owned by Getty Images) and the like. Corbis' plan to get in on the action will apparently be revealed later this quarter, and incoming chief executive Gary Shenk is hinting of an iTunes-like service and singing the praises of Flickr. Frankly I'd be pretty surprised if Yahoo doesn't have plans in the works to allow Flickr users to issue royalty-free licenses, much as iStockPhoto does now.

posted by Matthew Saunders @ 10:47 AM