Recently PACA published a letter from Past President Robert Henson about how Microsoft “has taken the bold step of promoting the theft of images online. Through its newly revamped
Office product.”
Through its “Office Help” function Microsoft advised users looking for images to “Use Bing to get images.” Bing told users that they can find images using a simple 3 step process:
1. Open Bing.com (and search for an image)
2. Hover over your selected item…and Right click
3. Click Save picture as…in the menu. Save image.
Henson said, “The message is clear: use Bing to download images for whatever intended use you might have.” See the entire blog
here.
PACA contacted Microsoft and received the following response from Dave Green, Assistant General Counsel of Microsoft.
Dear Ms. Aron:
My colleague Kate O’Sullivan asked me to contact you after receiving your letter regarding Microsoft’s Office user help page.
As you note, Microsoft has a deep respect for intellectual property rights, and a long history of working with many stock photo providers. Microsoft frequently educates our users in plain language about copyright; see by example: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/Copyright/Default.aspx. This summer, we also implemented a feature within Bing images search that enables users to easily search and locate websites offering tens of millions of images freely available via the Creative Commons license model, and we educate users how they can legally use these Creative Commons images.
Accordingly, Microsoft believes the Office Help Webpage simply explains how our products work. Nonetheless, as the Office Help Webpage referenced in your letter is now offline, these concerns appear moot. We trust this resolves the issue.
Best Regards,
On Bing the
Image Help function is also offline, at least for the time being. Certainly, at some point Microsoft will find it necessary to offer Help suggestions to its Office and Bing users. The advice given will need to be monitored closely.
The stock photo industry badly needs a system that would enable customers to quickly and easily determine if an image found on the Internet is one that needs to be licensed before use. See one suggestion
here.