ReadWriteWeb

Early this morning PicApp announced a partnership with Automattic and integration with WordPress. More than 7.5 million publishers on WordPress' hosted service will gain access to 20 million stock images from services like Getty, Corbis and Jupiter Images. The one caveat with these images is that there is advertising embedded in them. While the blogosphere continues to debate the depth of image content, the true significance of the announcement is rooted in the fact that a new era of collaboration is upon us.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced the release of 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code is meant to enhance Linux performance when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or R2 Hyper-V. Essentially it is aimed at server resource efficiency and reducing the costs associated with managing a company's IT infrastructure. Nevertheless, as revealed by Vyatta engineer Stephen Hemminger, the release may have been a legal requirement as Microsoft's code was originally in violation of the GNU General Public License.

The Associated Press is set to create a news registry to protect their online content from copyright violations. The organization amassed critics on the issue after a number of DMCA take down notices were issued to bloggers who had linked to the AP, used their headlines or paraphrased AP stories. One such blogging network, the Drudge Retort, was asked to remove seven items containing AP quotes. Nevertheless, after prominent bloggers created an uproar on the matter and claimed fair use on the content, the AP backed down. In a conversation with the New York Times, AP spokesman Jim Kennedy said, "We don't want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this" It appears the news registry is the AP's answer.

Yahoo and Getty Images announced a partnership today which will allow Getty to contact Flickr users and offer them to add their images to Getty's collection. Getty would then license these images and offer them to its clients. A notworthy aspect of this program is that the photographer on Flickr simply has to wait to be contacted by Getty. There is no way to directly submit photos to this program.