Last night, in the excellent Guardian blogs, I ran across this amusing picture of the Queen greeting four venerable guitar virtuosi (Beck, Clapton, Page, May); Beck and May look like rock & roll degenerates, Clapton like an eighth-generation aristocrat, and Page like a bank vice-president. The Queen is perfectly turned out, it’s obvious that being a Constitutional Monarch involves less wear and tear than being an axemaster. I gather the occasion was something of a debacle since Her Majesty couldn’t actually figure out what it was they did. Anyhow, for some reason I found the photo oddly charming and compelling, and I thought I might run it here sometime. So I spotted the credit and got myself a Getty Images account and worked out how much it would cost. I can tell you, Getty is not set up for bloggers. To start with, I had to specify which areas of the world it would run in. Then, I had to sign up for a fixed time period, with the longest available being two years. Finally, they wanted... wait for it... $235. Uh guys, there are millions of us bloggers, and more every day. I wouldn’t be surprised if a huge number of us would be willing to pay a few bucks to someone like Getty for the privilege of using a photo legally. But the price is an order of magnitude too high, and this fixed-term thing would just have to go.
