Corbis Corp, the digital art collecting company that is owned by Bill Gates, has acquired exclusive rights to use photographer Ansel Adams’ works for CD-ROM disks and on-line distribution. The agreement with the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust is the latest in a series of moves by Corbis to expand its archive of high-quality digital images. Corbis’s rapid expansion has worried some museums and competing stock-photography houses, but the Adams trust said it approached the company and asked for the exclusive contract, which is unusual in the art world. It said it could probably have received $1m or more for the electronic rights but instead accepted about $20,000 up front and asked for a relatively large share of future royalty fees. It said the deal supersedes a plan by a unit of Time Warner Inc to publish an Adams CD-ROM.
