Corbis has recently sold its content licensing to Chinese powerhouse, Visual China Group, due to it struggling against the lower-cost competition. Previously owned by the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates; the media company now owns the rights to some thousands of iconic and historic images from the last century. Some examples are the photos of John F. Kennedy’s son, John Jr., under the oval office desk, Marilyn Monroe above a subway grate and Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.
However, one of the acquired photos that have many people in discussion is “Tank Man”; the photo of the protester standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square. With “Tank Man” already being a heavily censored photo in China due to its political nuances, some believe that Visual China Group will eventually deny usage rights of the photo internationally. Some believe that the Chinese government may intervene in some sort of way to push censorship towards political sensitive photos like those of Tiananmen Square.
According to The New York Times, the rights of the image may actually be owned by third parties such as The Associated Press and Reuters. The New York Times also mentions a statement that was emailed to them by Visual China Group and states:
it was “fully committed to being a good steward of the Corbis images and will continue to make the archives available globally.”
With a statement like that, it seems that the rest of the world can be assured that the majority of these photos will still be available for use internationally. The company has also stated that it will be working with, long time acquaintance, Getty Images. Prior to the acquisition of Corbis, Getty Images has been working with Visual China Group to license images in mainland China for the past ten years. They will now be in charge of licensing these newly acquired photo rights internationally as well.
Will Visual China Group keep its word and continue to allow these images to be licensable? We will see soon enough.