First in stock photo industry to automate the offender notification process
Nashville, TN – August 17, 2011 – Today Dreamstime, a leading stock photography community, announced a new feature which will enable contributors to notify website owners when they are in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Passed more than ten years ago, the DMCA was developed to address copyright challenges that content owners face in an increasingly digital world.
A first for the stock photo industry, Dreamstime’s new feature streamlines the DMCA notification process and provides contributors a quick and easy way to let website owners know when they are misusing a photo. This is often an arduous and time-consuming process for photographers and creative professionals to undertake themselves. Dreamstime also hopes this new feature will educate image-users about copyrights associated with the images they find and download online.
“Though not always intentional, the theft and misuse of images is a constant battle for the photo stock industry,” said Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime. “Search engines have made it easier than ever to find and download digital content, but there is very little information about the copyrights associated with images people find online. Dreamstime is committed to helping our contributors identify stolen or misused images so they can focus on taking great photos instead of worrying about the illegal use of their images.”
With the advent of image recognition tools, such as PicScout and Google’s new image-recognition search tool, it is easier than ever for photographers to find where their images are being used online. However, what these tools fail to provide is a way for contributors to notify offenders when they are abusing the license associated with an image. Dreamstime recognized this as an opportunity to help its large and active community protect their images and also educate image-users about image rights and the stock photography industry.
When Dreamstime contributors find an image that is being used without the proper license, they simply populate the form on the Dreamstime website and provide the image identification number, the license that is needed to use the image and a URL to the website misusing the image. Dedicated to the protection and promotion of images, Dreamstime is taking customer service one step further by making this process more efficient for contributors.
About Dreamstime
Dreamstime is a distinguished leader in stock photography and a major supplier of high quality digital images to the world's largest advertising agencies, and national and international magazines, and film and television production companies. Today, with more than 11.7 million images, Dreamstime is currently the second leading agency in total customers with over 12 million unique visitors monthly to the site and is one of the most popular web sites in the world. The acceleration in numbers overall makes it the fastest growing stock photo agency worldwide. In addition to the current 250,000 free images available, Dreamstime's active gallery is updated by the second with photos from the site's 120,000-plus contributors. For more information on Dreamstime, please visit: www.Dreamstime.com.
