Image: moolah via Flickr
A recent survey of Australian and New Zealand artists has found that visual artists need easier solutions to take advantage of new revenue opportunities offered by the online environment.
The survey, Voice of the Artist, conducted by research firm AMR, shows that while 90% of the 1,020 artists surveyed have had their work reproduced – ​including 71% of artists published online – only 5% receive income from copyright royalties. That means 95% of those artists entitled to copyright royalties don’t receive them.
More than half the artists surveyed (56%) think it’s too hard to protect the integrity of their work online and 57% are not aware how much they’re being infringed.
Of the 20% that were aware of infringements, 54% said the infringement happened online, but 58% are unsure what to do about it.
Adam Suckling, CEO of Copyright Agency | Viscopy said: ‘There is no doubt the online environment offers unprecedented levels of access and exposure for artists, but publishing online shouldn’t mean a trade-off to earning any revenue when third parties want to use their work.’
New technologies will help
The survey additionally found one of the main barriers as to why artists aren’t generating copyright royalties via online channels is because they don’t know how to easily track and monitor the use of their work across the internet.
‘What we need now are more services that make it easy for artists to monitor and manage their images online, without needing to know things like how to encrypt image files or add metadata, digital watermarks or other restrictions,’ said Suckling.
Copyright Agency | Viscopy is currently working on developing a global permission technology which will allow someone who wants to copy an image or piece of text to simply click to find out who owns it, whether the owner wants to be paid for its use and if so, how much they want. A simple transaction can follow.
The technology is being trialled through a partnership with UK not-for-profit The Copyright Hub.
Read: A new way to reclaim your copyright
The survey was the first phase of Copyright Agency | Viscopy’s three-part project, Voice of the Artist, which set out to explore visual artist’s attitudes to, and understanding of, copyright in today’s digital world.
‘There is enormous potential for new solutions to be built to address this gap in the market and this could make a real difference to how the industry could evolve in the short-term future, and that’s exciting,’ Suckling reported.
More in-depth discussion about how we can better use technology to respect creators’ rights and strengthen the future of visual arts economies in Australia and around the world will be explored by academics, publishers, artists and curators at a half day event in partnership with Vivid Sydney, Voice of the Artist: Age of the Image, held on Friday, 10 June at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney.
