Google’s move to protect the credit rights of images displayed has been well received by professional photographers and image shareholders. It has been revealed by the internet giant that from now on it will include creator and credit metadata in photos it displays on Google Images, and also add copyright notice metadata in the coming weeks. This means that visitors can view information about the photographer and the right-holder.
Google’s initiative is a part of a collaboration between Google, photo industry consortium CEPIC, and IPTC, the global technical standards body for the news media.
To access Google Image rights metadata, you have to hit the three little dots displayed on each image, click “image credits,” and a little pop-up box will provide the necessary information. This move can more efficiently protect image copyright and licensing information.
Previously, Google has been criticized by agencies and photographers such as Getty for scraping images from the original source and displaying them in high-resolution format rather than as thumbnails.
Employing IPTC metadata standards in Google Images results will help ensure proper attribution of credit and support photographers’ copyright, while also boosting the discoverability of content and creators. This is a win for the professional photo community – Andrew Fingerman, CEO of PhotoShelter
In a progressive step towards building bridges with the photography world, Google said that it is hoping to “create better usage guidance for photographers, photo agencies and publishers to include copyright and attribution information in image metadata”, while also retooling the search algorithm within Google Images to place a greater emphasis on image placement, web page authority, and the freshness of the content.
