[Leica] Corbis and Bill Gates question.

[Donal Philby <donalphilby@earthlink.net>]

Alan Hull wrote:

>I am very puzzled about why Bill Gates is buying up all the
>Photographic Stock Agencies. 

Alan,
If you look in the archives of the stock photo discussion group at
Stockphoto.com you will have reading on the subject to last you the long
cold winter up there.

The irony is that neither Cobis or Getty have ever been in the black and
the prices are dropping.  I know of one case where both offered to lease
pix for $5/ea to web sites that wanted thousands of pix.  

and the Annual Report for Getty mentioned that they were doing better by
cutting photographers' percentages.  

Maybe there is a cataletic point where that reverses, but it all appears
to be directed at hurting the photographers.  Recently Corbis is
starting to leave off name of photographer, just © Corbis.  

And photographers are abandoning ship, agencies they have bought are
going dormant.

It is really a scarey, scarey time for those of us in commcial and
editorial photography.

The real, deep cutting danger is the new role of photography as a simply
commodity.

None of us likes to think we are just cutting out cookies to sell for
pennies.  

donal
__________
Donal Philby
San Diego
www.donalphilby.com