SAA releases comprehensive infringement study
The Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) a not-for-profit photographer advocacy organization, has released a comprehensive study of the issue of unauthorized or infringing use of stock images on the world-wide web. The study, which SAA performed in partnership with the usage tracking technology company, PicScout, examines and analyzes the results of tracking 20,000 rights managed images from Getty Images and Corbis for four months in 2005. The results show a startling rate of unauthorized use, both by inadvertent additional use to legally licensed rights and by simple theft of intellectual property.
SAA provides a valuable review of the infringement problem from all angles; how it has come to the fore in the digital age, how pervasive the evidence this small sample indicates the problem may be throughout the industry, what the problem represents in terms of lost revenue and the potential revenue gained through recovery efforts, and what steps photographers and agencies can and should take to address the problem.
The timing of the release of study could not be more ironic, coming just a few days after Getty announced it has established a flat fee of $49.00 for web-use of any image from its archives, including rights managed, rights ready and royalty free. Given Getty’s dominant position in the market and its influence on all other players, the move will, ultimately, impose that fee on most other suppliers of imagery, thereby devaluing the lost revenue (and potential revenue to recover) for illegal uses.
Anyone interested in the matter can download the study as a .pdf file free of charge from the SAA web-site
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