In a rare moment of cooperation between the various stock photo agencies, Getty Images, Corbis and Shutterstock have combined their efforts to build a site they hope will educate users about licensing images and the legal complexities of doing so.

The site, stockphotorights.com, highlights the some of the legal dangers that come from licensing photos for your site beyond copyright including privacy issues (model releases) trademark issues and infringement of designs.

The site’s solution to these potential problems is to license images from stock agencies that provide indemnification, or legal protection against claims of infringement over use of their images. This is something that some of the major microstock photo agencies have been doing since late last year.

To be clear, these issues do happen. The Virgin Mobile case, which saw the company use a CC-licensed image of a girl in an ad campaign only to be hit with a privacy claim by the parents of the girl in the image, is an excellent illustration of the problem.

However, they can also be avoided in other ways, such as not using images that contain pictures of recognizable people or trademarked logos not protected under fair use. However, those options are not discussed in the video, in large part because this site, though informational, is aimed at encouraging users to choose commercially licensed stock photography.

Still, the site is a good overview of some of the issues that do arise when licensing images for your site and it is well worth taking the three minutes to watch the video and think about how these problems could impact you.

On that note, I’ve embedded a copy of the video below.

In addition to the video, the site also has a blog with updates on image licensing issues, a list of photography agencies and links to other, related sites, a good list, even if PT is not on it.

In short, if you deal with image licensing at all, you will probably want to watch the video and bookmark this site for future reference. It is almost certainly something you will want to come back to.

As previously covered, image matching company PicScout recently launched its Image IRC, a database of fingerprinted images with licensing data that is publicly accessible, and ImageExchange, a user-facing program that accesses the Image IRC and finds matched images on the Web.

Currently, ImageExchange is only available as a Firefox extension (though other extensions are planned) and is in the very early stages of public testing. Aimed mostly at buyers of stock images, such as designers, ImageExchange and the Image IRC currently have access to millions of images, including from many of the largest microstock and stock photo agencies.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to take a look and see how well ImageExchange performed both to see what it was doing well and to see what might need improvement in later versions.

Here’s a look at my experience with the extension and what my early impressions are.

The Experiment

For my limited test I decided to simulate what a potential searcher for stock photos might do, I visited Google Image Search and experimented with different search terms to see how many images were found and to make notes about the usefulness of the extension.

All in all, I conducted 35 searches. The first 25 were for a variety of semi-random terms a stock photo searcher might look for, ranging from vague to very specific. Five searches were for terms in the first 25 but with the words “stock photo” added. The final five were for the same terms but with the words “clip art” added.

From there, I checked the first three pages of Google and counted how many matches were found. The results are below (click to enlarge):

Matching

As you can see in the chart, the matching isn’t exactly going to blow anyone away. Many of the searches produced no results with Google Image Search, in my test, showing 18 results per page, the highest any one search found on one page was 6, or 1/3. None generated more than 17 matches out of the 54 total images.

That being said, the results were interesting. The more specific the search, the better ImageExchange did. Searches with “stock photo” added also did better most of the time.

However, to be clear, when it was struggling to find matches it isn’t because ImageExchange wasn’t matching images correctly, but because the top pages within Google were filled with user-generated content and other images that aren’t indexed at this time. That will likely change as the database grows.

On that note, I fully expect these numbers to go up in the coming weeks in months as PicScout adds both more stock image providers, new sources of user-generated content and the existing sources continue to add images.

In short, the matching isn’t great at this time but it shows a lot of promise and, considering that it is a free service that runs in the background, it is still a worthwhile install.

Usability

ImageExchange is pretty much a “set and forget” extension. The installation is nothing special if you’re familar with Firefox extensions and, as you can see in the image to the right, the settings are pretty basic, the most important being the ability to manually search for just the images you ask.

My biggest gripe on the usability front is that the “i” that indicates whether an image is a match or not is a bit difficult to see, though it would be easier in regular Web surfing, it got lost in Google Image Search’s already cluttered results pages. I had to be careful to go through image by image when counting to make sure I didn’t miss any.

However, once clicked, the “i” did a good job directing me to the correct licensing page. In a sample of the found images, I never had an issue finding the correct licensor and understanding how to obtain the image.

All things considered, it’s a simple extension that seems to work well and not require any real intervention from the user. It’s a “set and forget” application that does its job well.

Speed

I wouldn’t call ImageExchange lightning fast but I wouldn’t call it slow either. On my computer, it took about 4-5 seconds after the page loaded to complete its matching.

The timeframe isn’t outrageous but there is no clear indication as to when ImageExchange is done working other than the icon in the toolbar. Since many of the “i”s loaded before ImageExchange had finished checking all of the images, it was very easy to try and click to the next page too soon sometimes.

The time wasn’t nearly as long during regular Web surfing. It is only during these images searches that the delay was as noticeable as it was.

Potential Uses

Considering that ImageExchange is both zero-cost and zero-thought, there’s really no reason not to install it. Yes, it has flaws but they are all ones that can either be addressed or are being addressed now. It is important to note though that, right now now, it is not aimed at laypeople, but at buyers of stock images, a crowd that will be well-served by this service.

My hope is that the service is able to grow in both scope and usability to reach out to a broader market, something PicScout has said they are working on. It would be nice to see average bloggers and Web designers using this tool to find licensable images on the Web as they surf.

It certainly is an improvement over those who use Google Images as a clip art library.

Bottom Line

The $10,000 question is whether or not you should install this extension. To that, the answer depends on what you intend to do with it. If you’re a buyer of stock images or routinely do searches for reusable photos, the answer is probably “Yes”. It’s free, easy and, even though it isn’t as effective as it could be, it works well enough to probably help you find what you need.

On the other hand, if you’re a blogger or someone that only looks for images more casually, especially if you’re looking for ones for free use, it’s not the right tool yet. That being said, do keep an eye on it as improvements could easily change that.

All in all, ImageExchange is really a no-cost service to use and, if you’re the type of user who might gain any benefit from it, I would consider signing up to use it. Though there are imperfections, they don’t outweigh the benefits and they especially do not outweigh the potential.

This is very frightening for small business owners as, especially in this economy, paying even a small settlement can sink a struggling business. But even if the case doesn’t reach that point, having to do significant work to repair a site can be a burdensome expense.

However, for the most part, it is not small business owners themselves committing the infringements. Though very gifted in their areas of business, they are not exactly Web developers, much less copyright experts. Instead, they are good people who trusted the wrong company to develop their site and are now left holding the bag.

It’s a sad tale and its one that isn’t always easily avoided, but there are a few mistakes that small business makes when having someone building their site that can make these situations much more likely.

With that in mind, here’s some of the most common mistakes I see businesses make when building their Web presence, whether through a third party or themselves.

Poorly Sourced Images

I talked previously about why stock photos and templates are a bad combination but it also applies to non-template Web design. Many people, especially those not familiar with copyright law, don’t realize that the images that make up their site, especially stock photos and artwork, are copyright protected and the rights need to be cleared.

As image detection improves and stock photo companies get more and more aggressive about enforcement, this is an especially dangerous mistake.

You have to make sure every image that appears on your site has the right to do so and this means planning in advance.

How to Avoid: Every image that goes on your site needs to have a clear sourcing record. If you purchase a site from a design firm, ensure that they provide receipts for the images that are used or some clear sourcing. Furthermore, ensure that you can use them legally on your site.

An ounce of prevention is really worth a pound of cure here.

Accepting Untrustworthy Text

It is one thing to hire a design firm to build a site, but another to hire one to write the content for it, especially when it is specialized.

I routinely see martial arts studios, doctor’s offices, roofers and other specialized companies turn their Web site’s content over to their design firm or other writers with no specialization in the field or even knowledge of it. This is a sure-fire way to either:

1. Pay More: As writers have to do large amounts of research to be able to provide worthwhile content.
2. Get Poor Quality Content: Writers, unfamiliar with the field, produce error-ridden content that’s embarrassing.
3. Infringe Copyright: Authors, pressed by time and lack of knowledge, will often just lift and rewrite content from elsewhere.

Your text has to be vetted the same as your images but you shouldn’t put yourself at risk needlessly. Having your content written by professional authors in your field will, in the long run, save you time and money as well as give you better quality content.

They might have a higher rate, but they can turn it around more quickly and the odds of a copyright issue go down drastically.

How to Avoid: If you can’t afford to pay an author in your field to write your content, write it yourself and have someone else edit it. Editing services are usually cheaper per word and it still ensures the content is yours. If you do want to hire someone, get someone reputable and knowledgeable in your field.

Just like you don’t pay a mechanic to fix your leaky roof, don’t hire someone to do the wrong job.

It Isn’t Too Late

Though this is all great advice for a company that is either building a new site or revamping an existing one, but it doesn’t seem to help those who have an established site.

However, it isn’t too late to go back and recheck your content. Doing this might not only help you catch problems before a copyright holder sees them, but may also alert you if your original content is being misused.

1. Use Tineye: Run your images through Tineye. It’s free and only takes a few seconds. It will find matches to your images that are in its database. Though it isn’t as powerful as paid solutions. It’s great for quick checks and should spot any obvious issues.
2. Use Copyscape/Plagium: Copyscape and Plagium are two services for detecting duplicate content in text works. Copyscape has a very cheap pro version (5 cents a search) and Plagium is free. Run your articles through it and see what turns up as matching.

For the most part, until you’ve received the notice of infringement, it isn’t too late to take action as disaster can be averted. But if there is a problem, every day is a gamble so it makes sense to act as quickly as possible.

Bottom Line

If you’re a small business, you probably don’t have a large legal team, a cushion of cash to pay off a copyright settlement or a large reputation that can stand up against large companies such as stock photo organizations. As such, you have to be careful about your copyright as every cent you spend fighting a copyright problem is money off of your own table and your employees’.

This is an area where prevention is the best medicine by far. If you keep these issues in mind and are aware of them as you build your site, the odds you’ll have problems reduce significantly.

In short, be smart about these issues and you likely won’t have a problem. Ignore them, and you truly are rolling the dice.

In late October, stock photo agency Shutterstock, announced that it would provide its customers with legal indemnification for all works purchased through their service. This means that, should a photo purchased be fradulent and the purchaser is sued or threatened, iStock photo will cover up to $10,000 in damages and legal fees.

This follows about a month after iStockPhoto, which is owned by Getty Images, announced its plan to offer a similar indemnification service.

Obviously this is becoming a trend in the microstock community as companies begin to offer nervous buyers a guarantee that the images they are purchasing are legitimate and backing up that guarantee with money. Though, as I pointed out in my previous post, the money might not be enough to cover some lawsuits, it would be enough for most cases, especially if the matter were resolved quickly.

But all of this begs a question, why is this microstock industry suddenly taking up the banner of indemnification? I decided to pose the question directly to Shutterstock and see what they had to say.

Peace of Mind

In my earlier article on iStockPhoto, I hypothesized that the current legal climate surrounding stock photography, has made buyers uneasy about purchasing even from established stock photo agencies. The issue comes in part from unscrupulous agencies that do not adequate vet work and aggressive legal action, in particular from Getty images, against those who use their images with a proper license.

Shutterstock, however, seemed to downplay that. Saying that they had been looking into providing protection for “some time” and that it was aimed more at providing customers peace of mind than addressing any specific concern. According to their representative, the addition of the indemnification is also part of a larger shift in the stock photography community, including the shift to royalty-free licensing and greater use on the Web, both of which have had sharp impacts on the terms of use and customer needs.

According to Shutterstock, issues with their images are “exceedingly rare” and the most common issue involves a customer using an image in a way that is not compliant with their terms of service. For that reason, they recommend that users always read the terms of use closely when buying images and always attempt to buy from a reputable agency. To keep other kinds of infringement to a minimum, Shutterstock has a stringent review policy for new artists and requires both a legally-binding contract from the artist as well as model releases on all recognizable people, to prevent privacy issues from arising as well.

But as much sense as it makes that these legal changes are coming from larger changes in the industry, the fact that both iStockPhoto and Shutterstock saw fit to offer similar plans so close together, the biggest difference being that iStockPhoto offers $10,000 per file where Shutterstock is $10,000 per user, still raises eyebrows.

A Different Theory

Lee Torrens, who writes for the site Microstock Diaries, a blog for photographers selling their work on stock photo sites, has a different theory. According to Torrens, the move is likely a strike at Vivozoom, a stock photography agency that opened earlier this year, was the first to offer such indemnifications to its buyers, up to $25,000 per case. Vivozoom was built from the ground up to fill what it saw was a need in the industry.

Now the two largest players have fallen suit and offered their own indemnification plans, possibly a sign that Vivozoom struck a nerve with the industry.

Torrens also predicts that, most likely, we will see other photo agencies, including smaller ones, offer similar plans now that both iStockPhoto and Shutterstock have done so.

It will be interesting to see what is the case.

My Thoughts

In the past year alone, one stock photography agency has opened up with the specific benefit of offering indemnifcation and the two leaders have followed suit with their own, albeit smaller, plans. This is definitely a sign that something has changed in the industry and that indemnification is a feature that is ringing with customers of stock photos. Whether it is larger forced in the industry or customers are becoming wary about buying pictures on the Web, something clearly has changed in the past two years or so.

This ramp up in indemnification comes right after technology to detect matching images has really matured on the Web. Where, previously, a customer who bought a bad image from a stock photo agency would never be any the wiser, today, with the use services such as Tineye and Picscout, stock photo agencies and even amateur photogrpahers know when their work is being reused without permission and that means the scammed buyer now finds themselves on the receiving end of a cease and desist or, in the case of Getty, a demand for a multi-thousand dollar settlement.

If people are nervous about buying stock photos, especially from microstock sites, it is certainly understandable. While the risk of buying a bad image is low, as it always has been when dealing with reputable sites, the risk of getting “caught” when buying a bad image is not nearly as low as it was a few years ago.

A combination of unscrupulous sites, new detection technology and aggressive enforcement has made the climate very tense for buyers. Buyers want assurances that the agency will stand behind the images they sell and indemnification is the easiest way to provide that.

Bottom Line

In the end, the advice Shutterstock gave is easily the best you can get. Buy from reputable sites, read the terms of use and follow them. If you do that, the odds of you having an issue with a purchased stock image is very, very slim, with or without indemnification.

That being said, indemnification is always better to have than to not have. If you can get it and it is free, it’s always better to have the assurance than not. That being said, once again, make sure to read the requirements of the indemnification closely and learn what your responsibilities are in the event you are threatened. Most require you to notify the company within X number of days of receiving a threat and to turn your case over to them.

All in all, the critical thing is to be smart about your stock photo purchases and to not treat Google as a stock photo library or make purchases without checking out the company. A stock photo purchase can give you a great deal of a headache if you don’t do it properly and its worthwhile to be smart about where and how you buy.

In an newsletter sent to its members, stock.XCHNG, better known as either “SXC” or its domain, sxc.hu, announced that it had been purchased by Getty Images, one of the largest stock photography agencies. This is the latest in a long string of purchases for Getty Images, which has included budget stock photo site iStockPhoto and more recently Jupiter Images.

Stock.XCHNG is best known as one of the world’s largest and most popular free stock photo libraries, with over 400,000 images that are free for download and use (with some licensing restrictions in some cases). According to the announcement, this will not change. However, stock.XCHNG will be offering users the chance to purchase photos from Getty’s iStockPhoto service on the stock.XCHNG site.

However, not everyone is happy about this purchase. I was alerted to the buyout by users of stock.XCHNG that fear both a change to the site, especially over the long term, and Getty’s notoriously aggressive copyright enforcement.

Getty, which routinely sends out invoice demands to alleged infringers, has earned a reputation for being extremely zealous in its enforcement and that has made some uncomfortable using even legally licensed Getty photos on their sites. This has also sparked a backlash from those affected and at least one lawyer has offered assistance with Getty cases at a fraction of their normal rate.

Stock.XCHNG is a site that I’ve used repeatedly on PT, recommended highly on the site, in presentations and in private to friends. Though it seems highly unlikely that Getty would expand its litigation tactics to stock.XCHNG images, which were freely licensed to begin with, almost immediately after the announcement I received several emails asking about alternatives.

Though, to be clear, I don’t think that anyone who has used or uses stock.XCHNG images on their site will be at any risk not only is the use completely legal (so long as the restrictions are followed), but it doesn’t appear, looking at the terms of use, that Getty would have the ability to take such action. Stock.XCHNG is a non-exclusive where Getty, on its own site, owns all of the rights to the images it sells.

Still, if anyone wishes to consider an alternative. I highly recommend PhotoDropper for WordPress for those who use that platform. For those who don’t, CC-licensed images are probably still a very good way to go for free, legal images to use on your site.

In the end, I will likely continue to use stock.XCHNG, though my uses will continue to be very limited. I already favor capturing my own images, usually via screenshots, and PhotoDropper to stock.XCHNG due to sizing and licensing issues.

However, I, along with other users, will have to monitor this and see if and how the site does change over the long term.

One of the bigger headaches many visual artists have talked to me about is that many, often misguided, think that Google Image search is the same thing as a stock photo gallery and that anything they see or can find is right for the taking.

The problem, however, is that most of the photos in Google Image Search are copyright protected, legal for Google to use in the way it does under the Perfect 10 v Google ruling. Others, using the full-sized images in blog posts or site designs, often run afoul of the law.

However, today Google announced that it was integrating Creative Commons into its image search. The new feature promises to find images available for a variety of reuse scenarios, including commercial use, and actually make Google Image Search an effective way to find images for repurposing.

As promising as this sounds, the system isn’t quite perfect, though it is a great first step.

How it Works

If you’ve ever used the basic Creative Commons Search under Google, you are probably already familiar with how to use the one for image search. First, visit the Google Image Search home page and click the “Advanced Search” link.

There, toward the bottom of the options, you’ll find a dropdown box for filtering the results by license.

Once you select your desired license terms, just perform the search as usual and you should see the familiar results, but with a notice like this one above the thumbnails.

From there, as with regular image searches, you can click the thumbnails to view the Web pages they are on.

All in all, the search seems to work very well. The results seem to come mostly from environments with clear licensing and there’s a good variety of images on most of the queries that I tried. That being said though, there were still a few hiccups and concerns that I saw.

Some Limitations

The biggest limitation that I saw when using Google Image Search’s CC functionality was that it, understandably, can not detect licenses perfectly. In the original blog post, Google warns that users should verify the licenses independently, which is a very good idea.

A big reason is because Google is detecting image licenses on the page, not within the post. So, for example, if a blog post has its text in under a CC license and but uses an image as a fair use example, the image, at least in some occasions, winds up in the search. It can also happen to where Google places unneeded restrictions on an image if, for example, a public domain work is used on a CC-licensed blog.

The other, and less avoidable, problem is that many people are placing CC licenses on works they don’t own. A simple search for “Marilyn Monroe” found many commercial images that were, almost certainly, not licensed for commercial use for free. Other celebrities produce similar results.

The user has to make the final decision about whether they have the correct license for an image and, on that front, I urge caution. Remember, all the search does is point you to pages where an image you like and a CC license exist at the same time.

The other problem is that, despite Google’s impressive breadth on the Web, there seems to be a limited number of sources that it pulls from for these searches. Flickr is by far the most common source, which isn’t shocking as it is the largest repository of CC-licensed images, but it and Wikimedia seem to make up well over 90% of the results I checked. There were a few Blogspot blogs and at least one Typepad blog as well as a few other domains, but they were the extreme minority.

In the end, Google’s search did not seem significantly more robust than Zemanta’s image search, even if they have far more images on paper.

Still, it is a tremendous step forward for Google Image Search, even if it also a catchup to Google’s main search product, and means that, with just an extra step, those used to using Google Image Search to find photos for their blog posts and templates will now be able to do so legally and freely.

Bottom Line

In the end, this new feature is nice, but doesn’t blow me away. Though I’m a big supporter of Creative Commons, the implementation of this is understandably flawed and limited. Much of the benefit is already available via Flickr, Zemanta and Photo Dropper.

Furthermore, as with its main search product, Google works to bury its CC search functionality as deep as it can. Though it isn’t as well hidden as its counterpart, its unlikely anyone is going to stumble on it by accident.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for Google Image Search but there is still more that could and should be done with it. The question is whether or not Google has the dedication to this project to make it happen.