Didn't I read recently that Getty cried "Uncle" and decided to allow free use as long as a suitable credit is included?
But lots of luck with that, Getty! Images are everywhere, especially considering Twitter! From the above link:
It's a real risk for the company, since it's easy to screenshot the new versions if you want to snag an unlicensed version. But according to Craig Peters, a business development exec at Getty Images, that ship sailed long ago. "Look, if you want to get a Getty image today, you can find it without a watermark very simply," he says. "The way you do that is you go to one of our customer sites and you right-click. Or you go to Google Image search or Bing Image Search and you get it there. And that's what's happening… Our content was everywhere already."
I don't know about that. . . we just received another FINAL final notice from Getty for an an attributed image that a wild cat web designer used in an attempt to sell us a website six years ago. He had taken a corner of a Getty Image which was about 1/16th of a non-copyright claimed image that they claim was one of theirs as a background on a sample website that he pasted our offices name on to pitch his work to us. The website he showed us was up about a week. . . very poor work and we told him "No, not interested!"
But Getty has been threatening US with a lawsuit now for six years because this guy used their picture on his website, with our business's name on the page! They say it doesn't matter that we did not request it, did not order it, did not even know about it: we owe then thousands of dollars for that 1/16th piece of their picture. We've been ignoring them for years now. But Monday, another demand letter came in.
Getty has images out there, offered for "free" but their "Free" is a limited time license that expires after odd times. . . and then the user owes licensing fees and if you don't pay in a timely fashion, they will sue. Reprehensible company. They also claim that even though their images are out their un-waternarked, they still own them and using them is still illegal and they will sue if you use them. They deliberately put them out un-watermarked to draw people into using them. As far as I am concerned that's entrapment. They also claim that no matter what you do to their image by modification, it is still theirs. . . even down to 1/100th of the image. They have bots searching the web for any portion of one.
As for attribution, you have to KNOW it's a Getty image. . . and so see above.