We all know that copyright is created the moment a piece of work is produced. But in reality, this fact alone is not enough to fight off freebooters and other folks looking to use others’ work without permission. And having complete, accurate metadata is a crucial first step in protecting yourself.
Modern image metadata standards provide the blueprint everyone can follow, but the task of keeping the metadata complete and up to date is on you, the creator. This is where we come to the main problem.
When you create any piece of work, it’s more than just a visible visual artifact. Naturally, it has some amount of accompanying textual information associated with it. Say, for photographs, it may include capture time, camera parameters used, GPS coordinates, and so on. For a painting or illustration, it’s creating date, technique, and, most importantly, the creator. This type of supplementary information is metadata or data about data.
This metadata plays a crucial role in the perception of the work. Not only does it allow the viewer to deeper understand the thought that went into producing the piece, it tells who has created it. Even if you prefer to hide your identity, chances are you’d still like the work to be attributed to you in one way or another. That’s why metadata usually includes details about the creator.
Having said that, we’re still yet to decide where to put this metadata. In a physical world, it can easily be a piece of paper attached to the work, a reference number paired with a card in the catalog, or something as simple as a write-up on the back of the picture. When dealing with digital files, what better place can be than the file itself!
Having digital metadata right inside the file is extremely convenient and opens up a lot of opportunities to use it creatively, but managing a lot of metadata is a cumbersome task. A digital camera that automatically writes its own metadata into the picture is nice, but what about your name, licensing terms, and other information? What if you do analog photography or use a really vintage digital camera? What about digital artists and illustrators? For now, the answer is manual or, at the very best, semi-automated work, forcing you to use heavy, clunky desktop applications. This problem is magnified even more with all the different tools you may use as part of your workflow.
Then, what about edited copies of your images? Or how does a specific cloud service handle metadata? What to do when the metadata gets accidentally erased? These are the kinds of questions that shouldn’t be bothering you as you are in a creative flow. Someone else should handle the menial tasks while you focus on letting your creativity shine.
The mere metadata handling is only one part of the problem. After all, you can manage all of this somehow, even if it does make your life a bit more miserable. Much worse than some incorrect metadata is having it erased completely (ahem, along with your copyright details, by the way!) after sharing an image on social media.
<aside> 💡 Most large social networks don’t really care about copyright, intellectual property, attribution, and preserving metadata. By giving them your work, you are now at their mercy, subject to the “Terms of Service” agreement with no voice or ability to protect yourself.
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Macula.Link takes the load off your shoulders by automatically generating missing metadata fields, filling them with your copyright details for the original file and all subsequent copies. All you need to do is to add your copyright details once, select the preferred license, and share. This is as simple as it can be.
But copyright traceability goes far beyond simple metadata handling. All edited versions of the image you create with Macula are connected to the original, sharing the same set of metadata except for the license. This allows to easily license different variants of the image under different terms, for example, keeping the original as “All rights reserved” while allowing the smaller version to be used under Creative Commons.
When it comes to sharing, we suggest you avoid giving ´(a.k.a. uploading) originals to the platforms you don’t control as much as possible. Instead, you can rely on the power of UniLinks that carry all the information and make it easier for everyone to use and re-share your content the right way — with full attribution and following the terms you set. By sharing UniLinks instead of the file itself, you gain the exposure you need to grow without compromising on attribution and ownership.
Learn more about how UniLinks work and what they do.
<aside> 💡 We can not eradicate piracy/content theft online, what we can do is to make sure ‘Doing the right thing’ is the easiest option possible. This comes with enabling copyright traceability and discovery accompanied by an intuitive friendly UI.
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