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Intellectual Property Theft - Getty Images John Barrettt

Update on the case against Getty Images

By John Barrett in News Archives
Published 23 Mar 2020

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Intellectual Property Theft - Getty Images John Barrettt magazine cover

I have some good news in these trying times. I managed to come to an amicable agreement out of court arrangement with a subsidiary company of Getty Images. They have taken all my images off their sites and no longer profit from my intellectual property. Financially there was no great return for me but it was a moral boost to stop huge monopolies profiteering from this illegal and insidious practice.

I would like to send a big thank you to all those people supported my campaign when I first mentioned it here on Soul Source. I am personally grateful to Oscar Romp and friends that supported my struggle by writing directly to Getty Images insisting that they stop the illegal methods of using my photographs without permission.

My original photographic files were stolen in 2004 from a computer in a photographic gallery exhibition by Jon Swinstead, owner of the PYMCA gallery in London, see: https://subcultz.com/2018/07/30/pymc-british-subculture-fashion/

Swinstead also runs a new photographic archive entitled 'Youth Club' and so for all those soulies that are photographing the scene please be careful to protect your work at all costs and be mindful that big business will seek to profit from your hard work often without payment.

In order to protect the UK soul scene from exploitation and commercialisation we have to be mindful of individuals like Swinstead and companies like Getty etc that have no moral basis to their endeavors and seek only short term greed and profit. This has to stop and I would please urge everybody on the soul scene to report any breaking of international copy right laws to a legal specialist in intellectual property theft.

soul _DSF0235



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Bunderthollox

Bunderthollox 262

Posted

Interesting piece-thanks John 

Roburt

Roburt 2,689

Posted

Getty Images 'appropriate' loads of the pictures they then charge others to use.

Back in 1963, a young guy landed a job at the 'Northern Despatch' paper in Darlington.  IAN WRIGHT was 15 and had to do the jobs no one else wanted to do. The papers photographer didn't want to work in the evenings unless it was a big story. So visiting pop acts playing local venues weren't for him. So he told Ian Wright to go along & take pictures. Wrighty caught the Beatles on all their early Nth East shows & struck up a friendship with the guys in the group. So much so that they asked him to go along on their 1st US tour to document it. So he built up a whole portfolio of rare pictures. Incidentally, he also took many early pics of the Animals & other acts who played the Club AGoGo in Newcastle in the mid 60's.

I was recently chatting with him & he told me that lots of his rare pics were now up on Getty Images but they had paid him nothing & had not asked permission to use them either.




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