At this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, ImageSpan and PicScout announced a partnership to help ImageSpan’s LicenseStream subscribers track and monetize content published online. The two companies said this alliance not only offers licensing and tracking services, but also addresses the growing problem of online image theft.
The Stock Artists Alliance estimates the revenues lost to online infringement to be higher than $65 million. PicScout’s image-tracking services and ImageSpan’s licensing and royalty-settlement services promise to bring to light how subscriber images are being used. LicenseStream also offers automated options that may help to convert non-paying content consumers into paying customers.
As an exclusive image-tracking partner, PicScout will provide tracking and registry services for all content provided to it by ImageSpan, including that of mutual customers in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Much like before its release of PicApp, PicScout has touted its upcoming image-registry services for months, but has released no public information on what these are.
According to this announcement, the Image Registry “allows image buyers to identify the copyright owner and know where to license the image,” but the service is not yet available through the company’s Web site. PicScout CEO Offir Gutelzon said the Image Registry “solves the problem of unidentified copyrighted images or orphan works.” This sounds identical to the recently launched and much debated Copyright Registry by StockPhotoFinder.com, currently taking some heat for claiming to provide a solution to the orphan-works problem and other aggressive marketing language.
LicenseStream allows users to embed terms of use—such as the venue and duration of use—into their content’s metadata. PicScout’s role will be to track images and ensure that they are used within these license terms. In cases of infringement, LicenseStream Pro subscribers have the option to use one of a number of remedies, ranging from offering the opportunity to legally license the content to requesting a back link, inserting the content owner’s ad feed, sharing ad revenues or issuing a take-down request. Using the PicScout Image Registry will be optional for LicenseStream customers.