Is gettyimages.com Safe?

I personally find this site pretty safe to visit, but their licensing is left lot more to be desired. For me one of the most glaring example is the work "'Boers and Kaffirs', Cape Colony, South Africa, 19th century." drawn by Yvan Pranishnikoff, which they placed a watermark and require more than $200 for the license for this image. While the truth is that this image is stripped off from a French journal "Le Tour du Monde" (published 1881, Issue 42, p. 257), which is available for free download (as long as for non-commercial purposes) from the digital library "Gallica" of National Library of France. Does not seemed very ethical for me.

Tries to collect huge and unfair amount of money for use of photo they claim to have the ownership of. I had a product photo in my webshop, that I got from the manufacturer of the product.with the approval from the manufacturer. Then Getty Images claims to own the photo and insists on charging me more that 1100 $ for the use of the photo.

They have a ton of images and they recently altered their policies. READ THIS ARTICLE: ***** READ THAT ARTICLE READ THAT ARTICLE

Numerous examples of claiming obscene amounts of money out of the use of "unlicenced" image. I could never find this image on my website (which has a lot of images) and they couldn't prove their screencap was legit. The screencap was taken years ago (old website layout). DO NOT DO OR PAY ANYTHING unless you're sent a strong and legal proof - which is unlikely to happen. They actually need a bailiff's report to validate their screencap (at least in Europe), which of course they never have because they do all that automatically. Their letters are blatant scam attempts and made to scare you with pseudo-legal vocabulary. Poor methods..

uses a company in israel to scan the whole internet for copyrighted photographs. then sends a letter from a lawyer to pay thousands of dollars even if you are the owner of the licence. after 7 years we are still fighting with gettyimages. this company is a pain in the ass.