In a story on Selling Stock today entitled “Copyright Enforcement: Shifting from Prosecution to Buyer Acquisition,” Jim Pickerell raised an important topic. As PicScout was mentioned in the article, I wanted to take a moment to briefly comment. At PicScout, we completely agree that it is important to be proactive while at the same time being reactive to ensure no one abuses copyrights. While our data indicates that one image is licensed for every nine that are used without a license, we would like to believe that some of these infringements are unintentional. That with a simple mechanism, someone who finds an image using our leading image recognition technology, could be easily directed to a place where they can license it. It’s an exciting vision…it’s a big vision…and one that we shared online over two months ago (http://www.slideshare.net/PicScout/picscout-image-registry-1601481).

We believe it is in the interest of photographers, stock agencies and solution providers such as PicScout to find ways to leverage the internet better than we are today to drive more proactive licensing revenue, which should in turn help reduce infringements. We look forward to being a part of it.

Offir Gutelzon
CEO
PicScout