Times Syndication Service, the syndication division of the Times of India Group (BCCL) had recently launched an online portal to service the B2B selling of archived images and content. TimesContent.com shall replace the existing offline means by which other newspapers, online content providers and corporates contact the Times Group to buy their copyrighted images for their private use.
The launch of this online service would mean that any client could manually search from over 180,000 images and make a purchase; eliminating manual intervention. Besides images, clients could also look for text, cartoons, illustrations, audio/video and microfilm presentations. This could very well turn out to be an excellent cash cow business for TSS in the long run. Presently, a lot of copyright violations with respect to images happens majorly because there is no easy way to legally use a copyrighted image.
The number of clients who have subscribed to the service is not presently available with us, but I wonder if TSS would eventually resort to arm-twisting tactics by targeting inadvertent uses of the image on websites and blogs. The international competition to TimesContent have been pretty notorious in this regard.
Primarily web content publishers do not have a sophisticated system to
check for images that are copyright-free. The most popular way to search for images has been Google image search and copyrighted images that have been copied through a multitude of small-time websites and blogs before making their way through to be published inadvertently by websites cannot be accused for infringement. There have been several such cases in the west where such inadvertent infringing of copyrights have been slapped with lawsuits by companies like Getty Images.
It will be interesting to see if TimesContent takes a similar route towards client acquisition. But irrespective of that, the launch of the service is an excellent means to facilitate easy purchase of copyrighted images and possibly create an additional revenue stream from companies and individuals who can now avail this service at the click of a button.
A quick look at the image database shows that there are plenty of offenders of illegal images around in India. So they sure have a huge arm twisting potential if they go the “Getty” way.
Desirable would be if they actually offer the photos to web publishers and smaller website owners cheaper or in the form of packages.