May 27, 2009
To protect your copyrights … To make money licensing photography … To smooth your workflow … To track image use … To find images you need … To find them again … You need to understand and use photo metadata.
We can help.
The Stock Artists Alliance invites all to the launch of our
getMETAsmart tour and PhotoMetadata.org website.
Working under an award from the Library of Congress and supported by industry partners, the SAA Photo Metadata Project is on a mission to promote industrywide use of standard photo metadata in every digital image file.
Our goal: Help all photographers – and everyone working with digital images – become meta-smart. Photographers need to embed metadata in their images, while stock distributors, users, archivists and software developers need to ensure that this information is preserved – and read correctly – as files are processed, copied, licensed, published online, reproduced and archived.
No matter how meta-smart you think you are, you’ll learn better metadata practices to help your business – and protect your legacy. Our MetaSurvey showed too few images on the web have identifying metadata.
With free live events and online resources, we’ll show you the many benefits of embedding and reading standard metadata. We’ll help make it easy for you to populate and preserve metadata in your image files. This knowledge is essential for you to protect your copyrights, support your licensing efforts, improve your workflow and better manage your digital assets.
Register now to attend a FREE getMETAsmart event!
Our educational tour launches May 27 with stops in:
Dallas, May 27
San Antonio, May 28
Seattle, June 11
San Francisco, June 17
Los Angeles, June 18
New York, June 22
Washington, June 25
… Plus Atlanta, Chicago and Tucson, with dates to be announced soon.
These evening events - including receptions - are free, but registration is limited. To learn more and reserve a place, please go to www.photometadata.org.
Learn more online at www.PhotoMetadata.org
At our new website, you’ll find everything you wanted to know about metadata … but were afraid to ask. Learn about the challenges of protecting, licensing, and archiving digital photos. Learn how using standardized metadata can help. Find out what's new in the world of metadata. Our extensive guides to metadata standards and best practices, paired with links to other resources, are just what you need to become meta-smart. Coming soon: Step-by-step screencasts and PDF tutorials show how popular software tools make it easy to embed essential metadata in your digital files.
Visit www.photometadata.org
Contact:
Greg Smith, Media Coordinator, SAA Photo Metadata Project
mediasmith@hargray.com
(843) 757-6557
About Stock Artists Alliance:
SAA is the only trade association focused on the business of stock photography. SAA supports its membership with exclusive benefits to enable and enhance their stock businesses. SAA speaks up for the interests of stock artists with a clear and powerful voice in the licensing industry. The heart of SAA's mission is education and advocacy concerning core issues, such as the need to better protect and promote licensing through the use of standardized metadata. Learn more at www.photometadata.org/About-Stock-Artists-Alliance
About the Digital Preservation Program at the U.S. Library of Congress:
The mission of the Library's Digital Preservation Program is to develop a national strategy to collect, archive and preserve burgeoning digital content. The Library awarded SAA a partnership to join its preservation network of more than 130 partners from across the nation to tackle the challenge. Learn more at www.photometadata.org/About-Library-of-Congress-Partnership
About our Project Partners:
A diverse group of partners support SAA's Photo Metadata Project, warranting thanks not only from us but from the entire imaging industry. Our partners committed to the usability and preservation of digital images include: Adobe, Microsoft, CameraBits, Photoshelter, PicScout and the IPTC. Learn more at www.photometadata.org/About-Project-Partners
Read the Report here or Download the PDF
September 2007
Introduction
Nearly all aspects of the stock photography business have been
transformed in the past decade. Film-based capture and overnight
delivery of analog images have been replaced by digital images and
electronic delivery. High-speed databases and broadband internet
connections have made it easy to market, sell and deliver images
anywhere in the world- all with the press of a button.
In addition, the internet has brought a major shift in how and where
images are used. Print uses are declining and new media uses-such as
online and portable devices-are proliferating. In the future, the stock
photo industry will rely more heavily on revenues from these new media
formats and non-traditional licensing models.
Along with the opportunities of the new digital age, significant
challenges for the stock industry have also emerged. One challenge in
particular is not yet fully appreciated, although we think this
challenge also creates an opportunity for photographers, image
distributors and industry groups to create new customers, new markets
and new revenue streams.
Easy online access to millions of stock images has also made them
extremely susceptible to theft and misuse. With just a click and a
drag, users can move a digital file from any web site onto their
desktop-without payment or license. Although images sourced this way
are typically low-resolution, they are often good enough. High
resolution is traded for an unbeatably low price-free.
In addition to outright piracy, digital media have also increased
the potential for legitimately licensed images to be used outside the
scope of the original license. Once downloaded, image files can be
easily repurposed and redistributed to other users. File names are
commonly changed and identifying metadata is stripped or altered,
making these images vulnerable to misuse.
This paper addresses how and why the stock photo industry is subject
to this theft; we also try to gauge the size of the problem. We
describe what is being done now, obstacles to overcome, and suggest
additional steps to minimize piracy of stock images, protect our
copyrights, and maximize revenue opportunities for photographers and
the distributors of their images.
The Size of the Problem
To learn more about the extent of the infringement problem, the Stock
Artists Alliance teamed up with PicScout, a company that uses advanced
visual recognition technology to track images on the web. Starting with
a repository of copyrighted images, PicScout crawls the web to find
matches and the technology is able to reliably identify unauthorized
usages.
In 2003, SAA became aware that PicScout had begun searching
commercial web sites for the Rights Managed images of several major
stock collections and uncovered a shocking rate of abuse-nine out of
every ten images they found were unauthorized uses.
This suggested a staggering loss of potential licensing revenue to
those companies-and to copyright holders. PicScout further observed
that these infringements could be classified into two general
categories-inadvertent misuse and intentional theft. While some
customers exceeded legitimate licenses, a large fraction of cases they
reported were blatant infringements.
It is difficult to know how to interpret the real-world significance
of this startling finding since many infringing uses cannot practically
be converted into new licenses-yet. But these practical difficulties
have not stopped many stock distributors, archives, and some individual
photographers from aggressively pursuing some of the worst offenders,
often with real revenue gains as the result.
Public records indicate the largest stock distributors today convert
many infringers into paying customers and generate millions in revenue
that used to go uncollected. Mid-sized and smaller archives too have
reported significant revenues recovered by pursuing leads.
Infringements of Stock Images
and Lost Revenues
This 2007 white paper report addresses one of the stock industry’s most serious issues. It reports on findings of the landmark investigative study conducted by SAA using PicScout’s advanced visual-search technology to track 20,000 images from the leading stock distributors. It uncovered a high rate of misuse. This report presents detailed results and offers insights into the critical issue of infringements of digital images. It summarizes what is being done now, and it provides action steps for photographers and stock distributors to take.
Read the Report
Straight Talk
on Stock Licensing Models
Adapted from the orginal SAA White Paper: Understanding Stock Licensing Models, and published in 2005, this report explains the fundamental differences between Rights Managed and Royalty Free licensing models. While industry dynamics have continued to evolve, and new variations of these licensing models have been introduced since then, the points made are still relevant today.
Read the Report
A Metadata Manifesto
While the digital age provides conveniences and automation, it increases substantially the risk of losing tracking information. SAA’s 2006 “Metadata Manifesto” presents a set of principles for the use and preservation of embedded image metadata. It urges the industry to put them into practice, offering specific action steps.
Read the Manifesto
September 6, 2007. The Stock Artists Alliance has released its latest white paper report, “Infringements of Stock Images and Lost Revenues,” which addresses one of the stock industry’s most serious challenges.
Read the White Paper
Along with the opportunities of the new digital age, easy online access to millions of stock images has also made them extremely susceptible to theft and misuse. With just a click and a drag, anyone can move a digital file from a web site onto their desktop—without any payment to photographers or distributors.
In addition to outright piracy, there is also the increased potential for legitimately licensed images to be misused. Once downloaded, image files can be easily repurposed and redistributed to other users. File names are commonly changed and identifying metadata is stripped or altered, making these images vulnerable to misuse—and even more difficult to enforce copyrights.
SAA’s research addresses how and why the stock photo industry is subject to this theft. The report also describes current industry-wide initiatives and suggests specific steps to minimize piracy of stock images, protect our copyrights, and create new revenue opportunities for photographers, archives and distributors.
SAA’s report features detailed findings of a landmark SAA/PicScout study that tracked for four months the online uses of 20,000 Rights Managed images represented by market leaders Getty Images and Corbis. SAA’s report also gauges the size of the problem and develops a ballpark estimate of the industry’s uncollected revenues.
According to respected stock industry expert, Joe LaCugna, PhD, “SAA and PicScout are to be commended and thanked for this preliminary research into the costs of online infringements of stock images. This study offers the most specific and actionable research into this critical issue facing the stock industry today.”
LaCugna reviewed the methods and findings and concluded that “SAA used a simple, straight-forward method to build a compelling case that collecting on infringing uses is a largely untapped potential revenue stream for agencies and some photographers, and that new technologies are making it much easier to track rights and convert infringers into paying customers. This is rare good news all around for players in the stock image industry. SAA also makes a strong case for even greater vigilance and better industry collaboration, and they identify best practices for photographers who want to earn as much as they can from their images.”
***
Just before releasing this report, SAA learned of a new Getty Images' new license product that prices images across all their collections at $49 for web or digital use, including their highest value RM images. This is a very troubling move which seems to devalue their RM imagery and thus undermines efforts to collect lost revenues from web-based infringements.
SAA’s report also describes tracking and recovery efforts across the industry and suggests that much more can still be accomplished. Obstacles that can best be addressed include the lack of industry-wide licensing standards, the need for more effective rights management of all stock images (including Royalty Free), and a commitment to embed and preserve image metadata whenever digital files are sent or received.
SAA’s Executive Director Betsy Reid notes: “As an advocate for stock photographers’ interests, SAA is committed to working toward solutions with our industry partners, and this begins with building greater awareness around this infringement issue and for all stakeholders to do their part in addressing this issue. We can achieve a lot through collective efforts that we cannot achieve alone.”
