Getty Images Falls Victim to the Changes of the Internet

It seems like every week there’s another example of how the Internet has toppled business models that have been in place longer than the Internet itself.

Control is not really possible when there are so many ways to pirate or undercut sales. The newspaper, music, movie, and now images market are changing drastically (and I love to read Getty was the first to license images online and now it’s fallen victim to it. Sites like Flickr, iStockphoto (which they bought for $50 million in 1996), and others charge much less - sometimes free or a dollar an image. That forced Getty to lower their prices. Then came cell phone cameras, that have further eroded their profit (which is interesting because though they are low quality they are quick to get, free, and people like how real they are). Their shares dropped more than 47 percent this past year.

I noticed that