If keyword are chaos – then intellectual property (copyright) marking is mayhem.
The mission of PLUS – Simplify & Facilitate Image Licensing.
Specific Focus:
- Global Metadata Standards for the Communication of Image Rights.
- Supporting Systems
PLUS Must Provide Broad Benefit
- Any and all licensing models.
- Commissioned and stock images.
- Photography, illustration, artworks.
- Any country/law/language.
- Before, during & after transaction.
- No pricing.
- Benefit everyone, everywhere.
This with the “no pricing” point is important since many countries prohibit pricing alliances.
Plus has built a glossary of 1500 license and intellectual property related terms. Words end definitions from a multitude of image agencies from the whole world were collected. Then they look on how the overlapped and made a joint work to build a common glossary. Both Licensors & Licensees have approved them. The glossary was written in American English, it is now being translated into other languages. This reflects the common practice of PLUS; create a Foundation in 1 Language, and then let local working groups translate.
PLUS has developed a media matrix and a license data format. The have standardized menus to be used by e-commerce solutions. This makes the buyer comfortable since he sees the same structure and definitions independent of image supplier. When an image is licensed the seller embeds a license code string that identifies the allowed use for that specific image. This string is embedded in the image. PLUS has built a license generator to be used by the Licensor and decoder to be used by the Licensee. Both are open source and free of charge.
To simplify the adoption of PLUS they have build a set of standard licenses for rights managed material. This are called PLUS packs. SAA (Stock Artists Alliance) has built a price calculator that for this that you can populate with your own pricelist.
PLUS are also building up registrars were you will be able to register images and to who and how the have been licensed. This will be independent of buyers and sellers.
Notes from the first Photo Metadata Conference. This conference was held in Florence, Italy june 7, 2007. It was organized by Cepic, IPTC and IFRA. These are my private notes published to give you some idea of what was discussed. I will later write some articles from the conference and publish those on BLF.se and DigitalFotografen.se, but probably only in Swedish. If there are any demand I might make a short translated version in English. You can find presentations and more information at phmdc.org and cepic.org .