PACA (Picture Archive Council Of America) have released an antipiracy statement titled ‘Putting our focus on piracy - Unauthorized use and the media licensing industry.
The effect of piracy and unauthorized use on media licensing businesses should not be underestimated. As an industry, we face a threat that is hard to measure accurately and even harder to prevent. But we do know its outcome: loss of revenue and an eroded ability to protect and monetize our creative property. PACA is taking a stand against theft, evangelizing its impact and what we can do to combat it.
We’re reaching out to our members and sister trade organizations, publishing and publicizing information on piracy, and sharing our findings with representatives in government, especially those focused on trade and copyright. And we need you to join us in this critical fight.
Survey says
To help us better see what we’re up against, PACA conducted an online survey between the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 specifically focused on the impact to revenues for the commercial and editorial image and motion licensing industry from unauthorized use. We concentrated solely on the US market, and invited all relevant PACA members to participate, as well as a number of non-members. The results were striking, but not surprising.*
One hundred percent of responders voiced some level of concern about the effect of piracy on their organization, with 81% indicating that they are either “increasingly concerned” or even “very concerned.” Across all business sizes, 30% reported feeling that infringement volumes were increasing for the survey period by 10% to 50% year over year. Remarkably, another 26% believed that infringements were increasing by more than 50% compared to the previous year.
And our survey data is not the only confirmation of what certainly looks to be an ominous trend. In 2005, an organization of stock photo artists, the Stock Artist Alliance, requested that a third-party organization, PicScout, survey a sample of commercial websites to assess the level of infringements of images licensed on a rights-managed basis in the US, Germany and the UK. Published in 2007, the study showed that approximately 9 out of every 10 images on commercial websites indicated some level of infringement.
In March 2010, PicScout shared new global data showing that the total volume of infringements reported by its stock agency clients increased more than 3 times over 2006 levels—about 8 out of 10 uses today of rights managed images on commercial websites are being used without licensing.
Defining unauthorized use
The practice of an end user utilizing product without a license agreement, or in a way that falls outside of a license agreement. Includes deliberate theft of product online, as in use on a personal blog or social media profile, through file sharing sites, or in typical product applications like advertising or publishing.
Holding back the tide
For PACA members, these numbers are a reality of everyday business. Of our survey responders, 66% stated that they have invested in at least a part-time in-house resource for pursuing infringements, and many utilize outside technology partners as well.
When they are alerted to piracy, it is clear that the dominant responses of our members are reactive. The majority of responsive actions rely heavily on “requests for payment” or a “request for removal,” steps which not only consume time and capital resources on the part of stock companies, but apparently have a very mixed rate of success. 55% of members indicated they had 10 or fewer pursuit outcomes that generated revenue during the year. And the bulk of respondents—57%— reported recovering less than $10K, with 19% recovering none at all.
It is worth noting that no one is taking infringement lying down. A significant 96% of respondents said they actively watermark and/or embed copyright data in content to proactively help prevent piracy. And few organizations, regardless of size, reported taking no action when infringements are found, although of those that did say they took no action, nearly half indicated a lack of resources as the reason. Considering how little might be recovered from pursuit, this hardly comes as a shock.
Artistic license
Unfortunately, the majority of infringement seem to be occurring, as always, in some of the most fertile markets for stock content. In a technological era when designers and developers can simply right-click on just about any online image and repurpose it, it’s not surprising that web advertising and online editorial uses dominate the infringement categories for our survey responders.
Not far behind is the professional, commercial, and personal blogosphere, where a casual approach to content creation and management seems to make image licensing a low priority, regardless of the robust viewer traffic these pages can receive. And despite the often-heard cry that “print is dead,” piracy there seems alive and well, with 32% of responders indicating infringements in traditional print advertising.
*Data inclusive of all product types in both commercial and editorial licensing: RF, RM, footage and microstock. Annual assumptions for activity in 2009.
Difficult medicine
The stock photography industry depends on copyright to protect the value of the works that we license on behalf of their owners. As the internet grows ever greater in importance, we must be able to continue to license images to users in an online environment. Yet while the web demands more and more images, it’s becoming easier and easier to use them without appropriate licensing.
It’s impossible to determine the full economic harm of unauthorized uses, but our study shows that the use of images without proper licensing and payment is rampant. As a consequence, the revenue earned by PACA members—and, critically, our contributing artists—are necessarily impaired. On an industry level, the risk that free images will continue to erode the market for professionally created images licensed by PACA members is simply unacceptable—any significant further decrease in revenues will undoubtedly impact the size and viability of organizations, our members’ employees, and professional earners whose content is at the core of our offer.
At PACA, we’re focusing on four fronts where we believe real and lasting impacts on piracy can be achieved:
Education. Copyright education in the school system must be established. As part of our mission, PACA has designed a copyright education program designed to educate image users and visual artists of copyright basics in licensing images. Yet our involvement has revealed a striking lack of basic copyright knowledge, which surely contributes to (at least) inadvertent infringement. In a time when instruction about plagiarism and cheating are a major focus for the education system, copyright and asset ownership would seem to be a natural extension.
Technology. PACA encourages the use of technology solutions to encourage proper licensing and deter infringements. Technology companies are offering image recognition and image tracking solutions that can connect a potential user to the image owner or image licensor. While we recognize the budget impact these investments can have on our members—especially smaller organizations—we are confident that wider use of technology deterrents will help secure more revenue for stock companies over the long term.
Advocacy. PACA has recently taken the step of retaining a lobbying professional in the Washington, DC area to strengthen and streamline our relationship with the US Copyright Office. We believe this new arrangement will not only bring our member’s concerns about piracy into greater relief, but also allow us to offer industry-wide insight into the causes and impacts of infringement.
Enforcement. PACA strongly encourages the enforcement of intellectual property rights on a worldwide basis and the continued necessity of working with other countries to reduce infringements on a global basis. Here in the US, we have realized that means a cost-effective and efficient judicial mechanism to enforce our industry’s rights. As copyright infringement cases are the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts, the expense, both administrative and legal in filing a federal copyright claim, can exceed the amount of potential damages available to a copyright owner.
To that end, PACA is putting its support behind recent and ongoing congressional efforts to provide better enforcement tools to fight foreign websites that are dedicated to pirated material. We also are working on comments for the US Copyright Office for a possible Small Claims Dispute Resolution Option, as well as best practices with copyright registry.
Next steps
Finding a remedy to the level of piracy our members face will not be easy. Those who willfully or inadvertently infringe on copyright ownership of an image can do so more easily than ever, and the burden of detection, pursuit, and enforcement is wholly on the shoulders of our industry.
But we at PACA believe that doing nothing will deliver nothing. Only a concerted effort on the part of every PACA member—and, indeed, all stakeholders in the media and content world, from music to motion pictures and beyond—can effect the necessary change to slow the steady decay of revenue caused by infringement. We invite you to stand with us against infringement, use PACA resources to arm your organization, and get involved in this critical fight for our collective survival. We must not tolerate piracy in the image business. We can’t.
Learn more at pacaoffice.org
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