Why Visual Works are Vulnerable to being Orphaned
Orphan Works legislation comes at a time when there is already daunting pressure on artists, as copyright holders, to protect their intellectual property due to the digitization and online distribution of their images.
In the digital world, the only reliable way at present to identify the source of a digital image is to examine metadata embedded in the image file. When this is the case, the copyright holder can readily be determined and a prospective user can use the embedded contact information to secure a legitimate license for use of the image.
Adjacent credit lines on a web page are not reliable, since few images are published with accurate copyright attribution and even so, the image can easily be removed from the location where the identifying details can be found.
The problem is that copyright owners have little control over what happens to their image files once they leave their desktop. Once forwarded to stock image distributors and end users, the files are subject to all manner of changes that result in the loss of this critical identifying information.
Absent such identifications, this legislation will surely tempt commercial and editorial users to file for "orphan works" status, even for what is clearly a contemporary image that they sourced online or even from their own archives.
SAA's ongoing work to understand current metadata practices across the image licensing community makes clear that even with the best efforts of artists, it is commonplace that images have no identifying information. Metadata is often inadvertently overwritten and stripped, and images easily copied and redistributed without it, making the problem worse.
SAA is now in the process of conducting an extensive MetaSurvey of stock images, which are represent the most widely copied and distributed images in the marketplace. Our early findings indicate that most have inadequate identifying information embedded in the image files.
This lack of reliable attribution, along with an Internet culture of disregard for the rights of copyright holders, results in rampant Internet infringements of digital images. Because they are prominently featured in online databases, professional stock images are particularly vulnerable to such abuse. SAA, in partnership with PicScout, investigated this issue and reported on it in a recent SAA white paper , Infringements of Stock Images and Lost Revenues.
SAA's Metadata Manifesto also speaks specifically to this problem and urges industry-wide changes in workflow and practices, presenting specific action steps to do so.This document proposes as a strategy the development, promotion and widespread adoption of principles, standards and technology for image metadata use and preservation. The goal is to ensure that all visual works in digital form can be readily identified, with all relevant descriptive data, and their owners located.
This call to action is now more urgent than ever.
