An insider from the now-defunct Digital Railroad contacted
Selling Stock to say that a number of media outlets have misreported what has transpired at the company and to offer a different viewpoint.
A number of stock companies are betting that the rising popularity of multimedia content will spur the growth of stock music and sound licensing. Though there has been some activity in this area, integrating audio into the broader stock business is proving to be a challenge.
The Picture Archive Council of America aims to become the Google of commercial stock imagery. PACA plans to launch a stock-image search engine with a simple interface that will enable customers to quickly identify collections with images that relate to any of more than 120,000 of the most used search terms.
Not all forecasts are dark: Publicis, one of the world's largest advertising and media services organizations, reported relatively strong third-quarter results, driven by digital media.
As Digital Railroad hurriedly shuts down, PhotoShelter is offering discounts and technical assistance with archive migration.
Digital Railroad has given a 24-hour shutdown notice. Photographers using the company's online archiving service are advised to backup needed information immediately.
Photographers Roger Ressmeyer, Richard Minden and 82 other named complainants have filed a copyright infringement suit against Getty Images in the Eastern District of New York. The plaintiffs allege that licensing their rights-managed images as part of Getty's Premium Access subscription product is a violation of existing contractual agreements.
Corbis predicts still-image sales will decline only slightly by 2012. However, this is no reason to be sanguine, as the same total will be divided differently among various industry segments. In addition, this analysis was completed during the summer, prior to the more recent economic disruption.
During a weekend seminar at PhotoPlus Expo in New York, Corbis has announced that it will adjust rights-managed photographers' royalty rates downward "to harmonize its royalties with industry norms." Company CEO Gary Shenk also told
Selling Stock that Corbis recorded a profit during the last quarter.