The ownership and reuse of visual media

This paper presents the results of a study of the ownership and reuse of visual media. A survey was administered to 250 social media-savvy respondents to investigate their attitudes about saving, sharing, publishing, and removing online photos; the survey also explored participants‘ current photo-sharing and reuse practices, and their general expectations of photo reuse. Our probe of respondent attitudes revealed that respondents felt: (1) people should be able to save visual media, regardless of its source; (2) people have slightly less right to reuse photos than they do to save them; (3) a photo‘s subject has a slightly greater right than the photographer to reuse the photo in non-commercial situations; (4) removal is controversial, but trends more positive when it involves only metadata (e.g. tags); and (5) access to institutional archives of personal photos is better deferred for 50 years. Participants explained their own reuse of online photos in pragmatic terms that included...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: JCDL
• Authors: Catherine C. Marshall, Frank M. Shipman III
• Keywords: Commercial Situations, Education, Institutional Archives, JCDL 2011, Pragmatic Terms