The 24th Annual
Digital Media Licensing Association Conference will convene at the Marriott Marina del Rey in Los Angeles on October 27 - 29. This is a must attend event for senior officials from organizations in the business of licensing rights to stock images. For the entire program schedule check out
this link.
One of the big issues to be discussed is how Free Content is disrupting the stock photo business. 45% of Creative Pros say they use free (CC0) content. Among the sites that offer free content are
Unsplash and
Pexels. Unsplash has only 1,249,371 images on its site which sounds small compared to the size of the collections of major stock agencies that license rights to use their images. But there have been a total or 1,172,745,666 free downloads of Unsplash images. See their
statistics page.
The Keynote speaker on Monday will be
Stan Pavlovsky, Shutterstock’s new President and COO. He will provide a high-level look at how changes in technology and the economy are affecting the licensing community. Stan will draw from his personal experience and share insights on how to navigate opportunities and determine where your businesses can optimize for adaptability and innovation.
On Tuesday
Chad Newell, Snapwire's CEO will lead off the day by examining the universe of on-demand custom production platforms. As the founder of a market leader, Chad will dig into the value proposition of custom imagery, why technology transformed the space and why custom satisfies a brand's growing need for wholly-owned and exclusive content.
Over three days, executives, innovators, creators, intellectual property experts, vendors and thought leaders will come together to discuss the latest marketing trends, content technologies, licensing models, privacy concerns, copyright protection, and critical changes in the stock photo industry today.
Another hot topic will be AI and how it is increasingly affecting content creation, search and licensing software solutions. A panel of speakers from IBM, Google Vision, Imagga and CloudSight will discuss how their products can streamline workflows through automatic key wording, content moderation, trademark, landmark and people identification and categorization, text from images, security and other practical marketplace solutions for creators and licensors of all sizes.
Francois Spies, Product Lead and Michael Librizzi, Head of Global Product Partnerships, will describe the evolution of Google Images Search including recent feature updates and new features under consideration. They will also discuss the results of DMLA's recent Google Image Search Survey. One of the big questions is the percentage of customers who use Google search to find the images they need and how stock agencies can make sure their images are more findable in Google searches.
Another discussion topic particularly related to editorial will be the matter of Trusted Content Sources. Customers need to know that what is being offered is real and properly cleared. Tom Smith of Gado Images, Bob Ahern, Director of Getty Images Archive, Lia Jusino, Head of Archival at Vice News and Jonathan Wells, Bureau Chief of SIPA will engage in a lively discussion on this issue including best practices, market trends and new technologies to insure content is real and verified.
DMLA's Senior Counsel Nancy E. Wolff, Stocksy’s Margaret Vincent, VP Governance and Legal and Andrea Stern fresh from moderating CEPIC's EU Directive Roundtable will discuss how the new EU Copyright Directive will directly impact licensors and creators in North America.
DMLA’s IP experts and senior-level legal counsels from leading stock agencies will discuss the hot topics in media licensing today – an update on state/federal privacy laws in the US and abroad, the legislative update including the
CASE Act, recent Fair Use decisions and Copyright Enforcement Dos and Don'ts.
To register for this event go to
this link.