I've not had chance to properly read all the relevant data, but essentially this clarifies in law the basic mode of operation most picture desks have been running in for a while. Attempt to find author for a bit, give up, publish and wait, pay on prompt, however they might get to skip that last part which isn't great.
Now, if you're embedding the EXIF data you're a step up, because the image desks are aware of the EXIF data. They'll look to see if there's anything in there and away they go, however if they're being reused online most people won't bother with that so you're probably out of luck, and you've probably got little to no come back.
There's many services that try be good guys with the EXIF info, so if you're a photographer and you give a crap about your rights of ownership, use those instead. I stopped using Facebook a while back for photography as I'd noticed it stripping the EXIF data (as well as butchering the compression on a number of shots), same for Twitter. Flickr I was surprised about, but 500px seem to preserve a lot of the EXIF data on upload.
This could either be really dramatic or not very dramatic at all, it depends on how it ends up getting used in court, which will take a while to shake out.
I'm actually trying to build a somewhat alternative to 500px/Flickr at the moment, and one area I'm really concentrating on is the EXIF data. I'm actually thinking of giving users more control over what data is kept inside their photos after they upload them, and allowing data added via the web UI to be written back into the images.
It'd be nice just to have standard locations for the sodding data in the EXIF though, if I'm honest :)
EXIF has always seemed a crappy solution to a crappy problem, but it's what we've got and it's what we have to work with.
Interesting you're going after Flickr/500px though, there's a definite market there but I'd have thought a lot of people were either stuck in their ways or transitioning to 500px from Flickr.
Aye, I'm not sure how big a market I'll have at the moment. The goal is actually to build a community somewhere between the two, as there are parts of both I don't like. I'd like to promote constructive criticism rather than fanboy comments, and do away with ratings (which are my main problem with 500px). I also find that none of these sites have yet figured out how to help you discover great photos, which I'm hoping to find a better solution for.
I'm trying to get the basics up in the next couple of weeks so that I can start working on more specific features :)
I'll have multiple file drag & drop in for the very first release, but after that I'm hoping to implement the ability to import from other services. And further down the line I'd love to be able to offer Lightroom/Aperture plugins for exporting photos directly to the site.
HN will be one of my first stops when I launch it, as I'd like knowledgeable beta testers!
You should also support xmp. It is an XML format that gets embedded and isn't quite as much of a mess as exif. It also is a common metadata standard that applies to more than just image files.
Now, if you're embedding the EXIF data you're a step up, because the image desks are aware of the EXIF data. They'll look to see if there's anything in there and away they go, however if they're being reused online most people won't bother with that so you're probably out of luck, and you've probably got little to no come back.
There's many services that try be good guys with the EXIF info, so if you're a photographer and you give a crap about your rights of ownership, use those instead. I stopped using Facebook a while back for photography as I'd noticed it stripping the EXIF data (as well as butchering the compression on a number of shots), same for Twitter. Flickr I was surprised about, but 500px seem to preserve a lot of the EXIF data on upload.
This could either be really dramatic or not very dramatic at all, it depends on how it ends up getting used in court, which will take a while to shake out.