Four weeks ago, Google made a small but potentially good change to Google Images.
When someone searches images on Google, there is now a tiny, barely noticeable, new link below the larger version of some images that reads, “Image credits”:
If a person clicks on this link, and most people won’t, it will display the Author, Credit Line and Copyright information pulled from that photo’s IPTC data. This works only if the image has that data embedded in its IPTC:
For this to work, you must fill in the appropriate fields in the photo’s IPTC data. The actual names of these fields can vary depending on what software you use. For example: Photographer, Author or Creator; Credit, Credit Line or Provider; and Copyright or Copyright Notice.
You can also add your web site, e-mail address or any other short phrase to these three fields.
I’m not sure how much good this will do because most people won’t click on this link. Even if they did, they can ignore it and just as easily take the photo from Google’s page. But it won’t hurt to add the IPTC information and this should already be a normal part of your editing workflow.
Some other well-known search engines don’t provide any credit or copyright information whatsoever. In fact, they make it even easier to steal photos by linking directly to the images rather than the hosting web pages.
Another big problem is that many web sites and most social media services strip out the IPTC data including the copyright notice. This violates copyright law but that’s another story.
