Media Removed - Managing Your Rights On The Web

I stumbled across this graphic today, and it got me thinking about rights on the web. Here, TMZ has a standard graphic that they swap in when their rights end for a particular piece of video, and, more importantly, they say "so sorry - we don't own everything". That's a perfect example of how things should occur.

How are others handling this?

(Continued after the Jump)

One of the big things will be how Getty handles the management of their 3 month license for online uses. Just as textbook publishers manage the rights when they order a second edition of a textbook, with no changes, so too must image buyers manage the rights of the images they have on their websites. It's nice to see that TMZ has some form of management of this, or perhaps, the video owner sent them a message along the lines of "if you want to keep that video up, it'll be $x more, otherwise, take it down", and TMZ felt that they wanted to keep their story up, but without the video. Somehow, without the accompanying video, it's just not as impactful - so too with photographs.

The use of some form of management/auditing system, to maintain image licensing aging, will be critical moving forward. One major solution would be for a photographer to submit a photograph to a third party with the licensed URL, and that organization would maintain the licenses for the photographer, and scour the web for unauthorized uses. PicScout currently scours the web, but it doesn't keep a watch on authorized URL's, and sending out invoices on a photographer's behalf for re-licensing, or licensing extensions.

This would be a natural service that a PhotoShelter or DigitalRailroad would apply to the licenses they grant onbehalf of photographers, which would generate them more money as well as you, the photographer. Perhaps they could also manage your licenses for images you negotiated yourself, if you just gave them the URL and image for reference. This could be a boon of a new service!

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