The price of most things falls to the marginal value to reproduce which in this case is zero. Is it right to sell the same thing so many times?
A better model would be to sell it once for a high price. Or charge someone to take the picture in he first place. It's a little dishonest to sell the same thing an infinite amount of times for a 100 percent margin.
The government can not always protect rent seekers today. Copyright is another bad law which will eventually fade away.
In your case clearly you did not charge Getty enough. The person used a copy of your image. A picture of a picture. Getty should not make it so easy to do this or they should pay you more.
All that said thanks for the post and for starting a nice discussion.
You do not understand stock photography. Images are only "sold" if someone offers a buyout. In such a case a buyer pays sometimes thousands of dollars to use an image that no one else will ever be able to use. It could be an image for a national marketing campaign. For example Coke would not want Pepsi having access to the same image.
Images are typically licensed. It is far cheaper for big corporations to pay for a licensed image than to hire a photographer to shoot the image in the first place. Images are in effect being rented. Is it right to rent cars or tuxedos for a wedding, or to pay for a hotel room? You are never buying these things. You are paying for a right to use them.
You pay for the right to use my work. Simple enough. If you think it is wrong, buy yourself a car or a condo for your next vacation. Lol!
Getty is an agency - like an agency that rents out property. They do all the marketing and take 70 - 80% of the fee. It's not a case of how much I "charge" Getty! We have contracts. They place a huge copyright notice over the images. Sure you can right click and remove the copyright notice if you think it is morally right to steal because you can.
They have given bloggers a way to legally use the images by embedding the image. It provides a link back to the site. Steemit somehow does not support this. I tried it. The other option is to use the link .
But, you are basically saying in your comment that it's ok to steal something if it easy to do and that renting out something is dishonest? I don't get it! Why should my business be any different from others?
Nice response. I don't understand image copyright. I do think once it became cheap to copy this kind of material these laws will never last. They are kind of bizarre as all govt backed monopolies are.
I enjoyed our debate. It is possible to have different views and be nice. Thank you! By the way, I hate government intervention in most things, but I suppose like most of us, I like the laws that are there to protect my interests. That's human nature. :-)