Advocacy
Support ASMP’s advocacy efforts to protect and promote professional still and motion photographers’ interests in Congress and the courts.
Photo courtesy ASMP member John Dengler
ASMP has established itself as an influential voice in the industry, representing members’ interests on Capitol Hill, in the courts, and in the business world. In this changing digital world, ASMP maintains key contacts to keep apprised of new developments, and works with representatives in Congress, the legal community, and other organizations on issues that matter most to professional creatives.
Read the Latest Memorandum on Copyright Modernization
Click below to read the most recent memorandum on Copyright Modernization that ASMP, along with others in the Visual Coalition, has recently sent to the Copyright Office and Members of Congress to enact fundmental changes in the way that visual creators interact with the USCO.
Advocacy Campaigns
The mission of ASMP Advocacy efforts are designed to empower still and motion photographers, and associated imaging professionals; and educate both members and non-members about policies that impact both the person and the profession.
Legal Fund
Support ASMP’s advocacy efforts to protect and promote professional still and motion photographers’ interests in Congress and the courts.
Copyright Alliance
ASMP is a member of the Copyright Alliance, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization dedicated to the value of copyright as an agent for creativity, jobs and growth.
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The Copyright Alliance represents artists, creators, and innovators across the spectrum of copyright disciplines, including membership organizations, associations, unions, companies and guilds, representing artists, creators and innovators, and thousands of individuals.
Member organizations include:
ASCAP, ASMP, BMI, Motion Picture Association of America, NBCUniversal, TimeWarner, Viacom, 21st Century Fox, American Photographic Artists, CBS, Directors Guild of America, Getty Images, Graphic Artists Guild, National Press Photographers Association, NBA, Newspaper Association of American, Professional Photographers of America, SAG-AFTRA, Sony Pictures, The Association of Magazine Media and Disney.
For more information about the Copyright Alliance and its work on behalf of creators, go to copyrightalliance.org.
Orphan Works
In 2015, the Copyright Office released a report addressing the issue of orphan works. ASMP continues to advocate on this issue in its copyright reform advocacy.
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What are “Orphan Works”?
As described in a 2005 report that the Copyright Office prepared for Congress, an “orphan work” is a work (such as an image) that is protected by copyright but whose copyright owner cannot be identified and located. It is clear that such a situation harms both creators and users.
Additional information can be found in the US Copyright Office’s Orphan Works and Mass Digitalization Report.
For more information about orphan works, please visit the US Copyright Office.
PLUS Coalition
The PLUS Coalition is an international non-profit organization with a tightly focused mission: to simplify and facilitate the communication and management of image rights.
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The PLUS Coalition is comprised of participants from more than thirty countries, spanning all communities involved in creating, distributing, using and preserving images. The Coalition has developed and completed the PLUS standards which were recently adopted by three major book publishers. The publishers, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson, have announced that they will use the PLUS picture licensing glossary definitions in their contracts, and expect image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within the next year. The PLUS standards allow rights and attribution information to travel within image files in a machine-readable format that provides instant access and universal understanding.
ASMP is active in the Picture Licensing Universal System Coalition. In 2008, ASMP made a contribution of $85,000 to the PLUS Coalition. This contribution would fund PLUS’s ongoing, mission-critical work as the international standards body for the communication of image rights, and it was made possible by a 2007 distribution of funds received by ASMP from the Author’s Coalition of America, the organization which distributes monies collected for non-title-specific works copied primarily in Scandinavia and Europe.
Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property
Produces research, education, and service at the intersection of IP and innovation policy to better understand and shape the means of innovation as a positive force for good.
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They do so by promoting a diverse set of perspectives and voices to present a fuller picture than that of the dominant legal academic literature on the role of IP and other legal mechanisms to transform great ideas into useful or aesthetic artifacts and activities.
Authors Coalition of America
The Authors Coalation of America LLC is an organization of the United States based authors and creators united to receive and distribute non-title specific reprographic royalties to Member Organizations, assist in further development of collective licensing programs and act for the general benefit of authors.