SAA Trial Reveals High Rate of Commercial Misuse of Getty Images Online

The StockArtistsAlliance (SAA) and PicScout today announced the initial results of their much-anticipated study about misuse of SAA members' images. For the purpose of the trial SAA members provided 13,000 of their Right Managed images which are represented by Getty Images. "By eliminating images with known licenses for Internet use during the past year we increased the accuracy and usefulness of the Study," said Betsy Reid, SAA's Executive Director. The images were uploaded to PicScout Image TrackerF System and then compared with images from commercial websites in North America and Germany. "We were astonished to find out these images were found 11 times the rate of the average that PicScout finds," said Eyal Gura, PicScout's CEO. This figure is based on PicScout's accumulative customer database of two million stock images.

Applying the same rate of misuse of images to the full Getty Images collection could mean tens of millions of dollars in lost revenues to both photographers and Getty Images. "We have provided Getty with the first PicScout reports and are confident that they will be responsive to this important new information by investigation of these cases and recovery of otherwise lost revenue," said Betsy Reid.

"The average rate of infringements on the web is 90%. This means that for each image that is properly licensed, there are nine images that are being used on commercial websites without being licensed," added Eyal Gura.

PicScout and SAA intend to continue this trial which is expanding to search images from other distribution outlets, and are committed to jointly act to better educate the industry about the importance of rights management and policing of image usage online.

About SAA

SAA is a global trade organization dedicated to the interests of Rights Managed stock photographers. Information about SAA's programs and initiatives at http://www.stockartistsalliance.org.

About PicScout

PicScout assists some of the most prestigious stock photography agencies in the world to control and protect their images. The PicScout Image Tracker Service uses sophisticated image recognition technology to monitor over two million images and track their use on commercial web sites. The service enables stock photography agencies to enforce their copyrights, better control their assets, develop new billing methods and increase their customer base. http://www.picscout.com

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