Press Release
PicScout, an information company that commands the world’s largest index of fingerprinted and owner-identified images, today announced an initiative in conjunction with the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA), to provide academic institutions with educational material regarding proper image usage and a free image identification tool for professors to share with creative, web and graphic design program students. Students can download and use PicScout’s ImageExchange tool to research and license images in one-click, making it significantly easier to create designs that include properly licensed images.
“The moment a photographer takes a picture, he or she owns the copyright for life plus 70 years. Unless there is an exemption, anyone who uses the image, whether for commercial or academic purposes, must get written permission to use an image. While fair use permits some limited use for educational purposes, most uses require permission,” explained Cathy Aron, PACA’s Executive Director. “Often students are unaware of when they need permission or not and if permission is required, they or their school may face monetary damages for getting it wrong. PACA is trying to educate students about proper image usage and is pleased to partner with PicScout to offer the ImageExchange resource to help mitigate the often unintended illegitimate use of images.”
Tom Caswell, Utah State University instructor who helps teachers leverage technology in the classroom, added, “Students often mistakenly think they are allowed to use images they search for through Google or any other search engine for free. This online hand-out concisely combines PACA’s ‘copyright commandments’ and PicScout’s ImageExchange tool, making it easy for me to electronically share this information with my students in a cost-effective way.”
PicScout is reaching out to more than 200 colleges and 125 high schools which have creative, web and graphic design courses to share educational material that combines PACA’s insights with the free ImageExchange add-on.
“Awareness and habits start early in any profession. By providing the educational community with materials that clearly communicate copyright requirements, we are doing our part to assist professors in the educational process. In addition, we are offering students a free tool to help them easily identify image owners, provide proper attribution, and where required, properly license images for use,” said Amy Love, vice president of marketing and business development for PicScout. “Plus, students do not have to change their workflow. With ImageExchange, students can continue to search for images on the search engines they currently use. And now, they can easily identify images that can be licensed and used in their academic projects.”
As the global leader in image tracking, PicScout created the image copyright protection marketplace through its widely used ImageTracker™ information services. Today, PicScout is the enabler of client image monetization services, and the standard for image credit through its ImageExchange service, which is leading the way for image commerce to become a legitimate Internet economy. Download ImageExchange for free.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on September 21, 2010
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