Controlling Copyright infringement . . . - Stock Photography

Controlling Copyright Infringement . . .

By Haim Ariav & Ze'ev Rozov
Special to The Stock Asylum
June 14, 2005

An Illinois pharmacist recently decided to establish an online presence. He hired a freelance designer to create a web site for his pharmacy, illustrated with several medical photographs. The designer was paid and the site went live. The pharmacist was pleased with the results. His customers complimented him on the site and it even generated some additional business. Things were going exactly as planned.

In New York City, a harried marketing manager worked furiously to upgrade his company’s web site for the launch of a new product. He rewrote all of the site’s content and now, at the eleventh hour, frantically searched for fresh images to compliment the site’s new design.

On the Internet, he discovered the perfect series of photographs and promptly downloaded low-resolution copies. “Quick and dirty,” he thought, loading the images. They were not perfect or high-resolution but good enough and, after all, they were “free.” He mentioned the new images to his boss, who asked immediately about copyright issues. The marketing manager checked further, realized using the photographs required permission, and licensed the images.

Half a world away, in Herzrliya Israel, the photographs used on both these web sites, and more than four million others, are constantly monitored by PicScout, a company using sophisticated Internet technology to battle an epidemic threatening the health of the stock photography industry. (Editor's note: PicScout has added a similar service to monitor images in magazine ads. For more information, click here.)

This could have resulted in serious problems for the pharmacy-owner when his web site was flagged because it contained known stock photographs. But, as we will see, efforts to educate, rather than punish, unintentional infringers resulted in a positive resolution of this case.

The health of the stock photography industry, the livelihood of individual photographers and artists, and the budgets of those who purchase and use stock images all suffer dramatically from widespread copyright infringement.

Today, illegal use of images on the Internet causes a staggering loss of revenue for artists and image distribution companies alike. Driven by the “Internet is free” myth, many people download and use images at will. Most of these violators are unaware of legal questions about unauthorized use and their costly implications.

Others blatantly ignore copyright laws, secure in the knowledge that many images are not protected and are, therefore, fair game.

Illegal usage is having a serious impact on the entire graphic arts industry. Companies that use such images now pay more for them but cannot be sure that those images will not be used illegally in ways that could embarrass them or dilute the impact of their own use. Photographers and stock photo agencies are losing significant revenues.

A recent study of copyright infringement of rights-managed images by the Stock Artists Alliance ( SAA ), an international photographers’ organization, and PicScout vividly confirmed the scope of the problem. Infringements worldwide occur at much greater levels than previously thought.

“For each image that was properly licensed, there were nine images in use on commercial web sites without proper licensing,” said PicScout Chief Executive Officer Eyal Gura. “Detecting and resolving this illegal use helps both photographers and stock distributors recover those lost licensing fees and substantially increase revenues.”

PicScout applies some of the most sophisticated web crawling and image recognition technology in the world to find copyright infringements. Its image recognition solution, called “Image Tracker Service,” enables the comparison of image databases with individual images on commercial web sites. The approach even detects matches when images are altered from their original form.

Using this technology, PicScout provides a number of services to the stock photography industry, enabling stock agencies to enforce copyrights, better control their assets, and increase their customer base. Presently, PicScout manages more than 3 million images for the world's most prestigious image libraries.

When PicScout matched the images used by the Illinois pharmacist with SuperStock images in its database, it prepared a report informing SuperStock of the location of the images.

Comparing the PicScout report with Superstock sales records allowed Jennifer Walker, SuperStock’s Copyright Enforcement Manager, to quickly determine that the pharmacy images were not licensed. Upon contacting the pharmacy, Walker learned that a web designer had selected and used the photos. She then contacted the designer to provide notice regarding the illegal use of the images.

“Once a potential infringement is identified, my work begins,” Walker says, detailing the extensive verification required to establish that the image in question has indeed been illegally used.

“Our approach is to verify and confirm that the image is being used illegally,” she says. “We document the details of the usage, notify the user of the unauthorized use, and provide the opportunity to retroactively license the image.”

Walker has found that one in three cases involve a company where a third party -- a web site designer or graphic artist -- committed the infringement. She patiently follows the thread to confirm the details of the usage and works with all parties to resolve the matter.

In the pharmacy case, Walker determined the usage was unintentional. She negotiated with the web designer who agreed to purchase SuperStock images for future use in exchange for reduced retroactive licensing fees.

“It was a ‘win-win’ situation,” Walker explains. “We don’t seek to punish illegal users but rather educate them as to proper use and convert them to legal users and customers of SuperStock. Many of the infringers are not aware of the violation and are eager to cooperate in resolving the issue. This creates a great opportunity to educate them and strengthen our customer relations.”

This education can prevent costly mistakes. Retroactive licensing includes hefty penalty fees and not all agencies take the SuperStock approach of offering leniency in exchange for future business.

A typical image that costs $450 to license for one year might cost as much as four times that amount, $1,800, if illegal use is confirmed. Federal law also provides for penalties of up to $150,000 in instances where the illegal use is willful.

SuperStock quickly realized the scope of the problem when it began using PicScout’s Image Tracker Service in October 2004. Within one month, SuperStock uncovered more than $140,000 in unauthorized image uses.

“Our experience in working with PicScout further validated what SAA learned in its trial with PicScout,” Walker noted. SuperStock quickly began identifying illegal users of its images based on matches from PicScout’s Image Tracker Service and has already resolved many of those cases.

The contrast between the Illinois pharmacy and the company in New York reveals the challenge confronting the graphic arts and stock photography industries in dealing with this problem. Awareness of copyright laws and how they apply to photographs and other images is required to prevent the vast majority of cases.

Like the executive in New York who had the presence of mind to ask about copyrights, users must ask simple but important questions whenever images are used. Who owns the image? What must be done to properly license and use the image?

Companies hiring freelance designers or web developers must make sure these third parties properly license images because the owner of a web site is legally responsible for its content. The economic well-being of thousands of people and businesses depend on how quickly that presence of mind can be established and put into practice.

Ze’ev Rozov is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at PicScout.
Haim Ariav is President and Chief Creative Officer at SuperStock.

PicScout's web site is at: http://www.picscout.com

Superstock can be found at: http://www.superstock.com