In one of the larger consolidation moves that have been sweeping the stock art business, Getty Images has agreed to acquire Jupiterimages, a subsidiary of Jupitermedia, for $96 million in cash, the companies said.
Getty will keep the Jupiterimages brand and will augment its collection of imagery with Getty stock, the company said. It’s unclear, though, what will come of the two companies’ royalty-free microstock sites, iStockphoto and Stockxpert.
“We’ll be able to discuss questions like that when the deal closes,” said Kelly Thompson, iStockphoto’s chief operating officer, in a forum posting after the acquisition plan was announced.
The consolidation reflects tough times sweeping the stock-art business--times that led Getty to go private earlier this year in a $2.4 billion acquisition by Hellman & Friedman.
And the times aren’t getting any easier. Gary Shenk, chief executive of Getty’s top rival, Corbis, said Saturday at the PhotoPlus Expo that it will cut the royalty rate it pays photographers for rights-managed images, according to Photo District News. 

- Stephen Shankland

“Old forests – those that are more than 200 years old – are not protected by international treaties because they were thought to be carbon neutral. But a team from Belgium says such forests actually continue to take up carbon dioxide and are therefore important carbon sinks.”

“Sebastiaan Luyssaert and colleagues at Antwerp University reckon that 15% of the world’s old forests, which are not usually considered when offsetting carbon dioxide emissions, provide at least 10% of the global terrestrial carbon sink. So disturbing these forests would release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and seriously contribute to climate change.
Luyssaert and colleagues say old forests continue to store carbon over time periods of centuries, mainly in live woody tissues and decomposing leaf litter and soil. Although young forests admittedly store more carbon each year, they contain less biomass. As a result, the total amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere in these younger forests is lower.”

Environmental Research Web