Two-year-old Cambridge, Mass.-based ImageRights International has launched a free version of its flagship service, which helps photographers and illustrators monitor the use of their content and recover licensing fees.
ImageRights’ Web-crawling technology continually indexes millions of online images and compares them to its clients’ collections. The company then reports on such uses, including the URL and Web site ownership information, to its clients.. The new service will protect up to 10,000 images per customer.
Senior vice president and former president of the Picture Archive Council of America Maria Kessler said the service exemplifies ImageRights’ commitment to advocating on behalf of photographers and illustrators: “We are enabling creatives to have more control over how their images are used, while sending a clear message that we are patrolling for unauthorized uses.”
Next month, ImageRights will be launching an optional recovery program to augment the free monitoring service. The program will help content owners obtain compensation for unauthorized image uses. The company’s paid monitoring packages are available in three pricing tiers and offer solo practitioners a higher share of revenue recovered through ImageRights.