Second Wave of Flickr/Getty Invites Being Sent “En Masse”

Today on the Flickr blog Flickr is announcing that the “second phase” of their partnership with Getty Images is launching and says that a new round of invitations to participate in the stock photography program are being sent out “en masse.” Flickr says that the new service will formally launch in March. Flickr has an updated FAQ on the program here.

An interesting side note to the new offering is that if you are selected for inclusion in this program you will need to change the license on any Creative Commons photos put up for sale to “all rights reserved,” on Flickr.

From the Flickr FAQ:

“There is a chance one of your Creative Commons-licensed photos may catch the eye of a perceptive Getty Images editor. You are welcome to upload these photos into the Flickr collection on Getty Images, but you are contractually obliged to reserve all rights to sale for your work sold via Getty Images. If you proceed with your submission, switching your license to All Rights Reserved (on Flickr) will happen automatically.

If you’re not cool with that, that’s totally cool. It just means that particular photo will need to stay out of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.”

As an advocate for the Creative Commons license personally I would have liked to have seen Getty/Flickr allow this license. There is no reason why a CC non commercial image cannot be sold and it would have been a good endorsement for this license if they could have figured out a way to work with it.

If you want to follow more of the Flickr Community’s reaction to this offering there are a few threads on Flickr that you can follow here and here. Note, you have to be logged into Flickr and allow yourself to see “adult” content in your settings in order to read the first thread.

Getty’s announcement on the new service is on their blog as well today where they say that “thousands” of invitations were sent out today. If you want to see what the invite looks like you can see this screenshot of it here.

Did you receive an invitations from Getty/Flickr today? If so or if not, what do you think of this new offering?

Related: Mike Arrington had an interesting blog post over at TechCrunch last week as well entitled, “The Photo Marketplace That Never Launched: Flickr Stock.”