After the courts denied requests to join on the creators’ side of the Authors Guild et. al. v. Google, several photo and creative organizations, along with a few individual photographers and illustrators, have filed a separate class action against the search engine in April.

Getty Images has built and launched Stockphotorights.com, an educational Web site that aims to guide users through the complexities and legal issues involved in image uses. The company said that the launch responds to the findings of a new survey, which identified a lack of understanding of such issues among many image users.

If you license rights to your photos for textbook use then here are a few articles you should read.

A New York court has ruled that copyright registrations obtained by Corbis for images submitted by at least one photographer-contributor are invalid, in part due to Corbis’ failure to list the names of the photographers—the authors and owners of the copyrights in the registered images—on registrations submitted by Corbis. 

The Obama administration, through the offices of  the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (USIPEC), Victoria Espinel, has recently requested input from interested parties as to how piracy and copyright infringement is affecting the U.S. economy. A key issue is the degree of unauthorized use. Getty Images says they identify approximately 42,000 unauthorized uses a year and Corbis says they identify about 70,000. PicScout, whose Image Tracker line of business searches the web for unauthorized photo use, says that in 2009 more than 80% of the images they located on the web on commercial sites were either used without a license, or beyond the terms authorized by the license. In addition, there were many unauthorized print uses, but for the most part there is no good way to track that volume at this time.

A friend who has been on the periphery of the photo industry for decades now works for a company that manages social media and search engine optimization for a variety of clients, including law firms. She said her office mates disagree on what they are allowed to do with pictures they find on news Web sites. She asked: “Are bloggers allowed to illustrate their blog entries with photos they find on news sites, such as a photo of a sinkhole? What are the rules about using editorial images in a blog post?”

Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to the existence of Creative Commons’ licenses which allow free use of images rather than charging a fee for such uses. However, a widespread use of Creative Commons licenses may actually help establish in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that "All Rights (are) Reserved” by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.

Corbis is probably doing more than any other stock photo seller to track infringements, and collect from those who infringe. Dave Green, Corbis Senior Corporate Counsel, explains how they do it and the benefits, not only in additional revenue, but in educating customers.

The stock photo industry is rapidly moving to the point where there are more photo subjects you can’t use for commercial purposes than those you can.