The Chinese are leaders in image theft – USA ranked three
COPYTRACK evaluated 10,000 records for countries with most breach of copyright infringements of digital images in 2016
Berlin, February 23, 2017: China recorded the most copyright infringements of digital images in 2016 with about 11 percent. France and the United States are in second and third places. This is the result of an evaluation of the online portal COPYTRACK. The Berlin-based company analyzed 10,000 cases selected randomly in 2016 from its database to find the ten countries with the most copyright infringements.
COPYTRACK is specialized to browse the Internet worldwide for unauthorized use of pictures and later to obtain license payments. Photographers, picture and news agencies, publishers as well as e-commerce providers are among its customers. Through a modern high-performance search COPYTRACK scans the entire Internet for duplicates of images of its customers. The hit accuracy is 98 percent. In 2016 COPYTRACK tracked the most frequent copyright infringements in China (11.11%), France (9.53%) and the US (8.21%). The runners up on this point of image theft are Turkey (4.65%), closely followed by Russia (4.57%), the United Arab Emirates (4.55%) and Spain (3.47%). Ukraine (2.85 percent), the Netherlands (2.72%) and Italy (2.68%) make up the bottom of the top ten.
“Most of our customers are very surprised where we find their images used illegally”, says COPYTRACK’s CEO Marcus Schmitt. „Image theft exists everywhere. From private people, to bloggers to magazines and companies – image theft occurs in a lot of places. Obviously there are some countries, where the creative property of others is less respected”, adds Schmitt. For COPYTRACK it is of no matter where an image theft took place. At their customer’s request the company gets active worldwide and demands the subsequent payments in 140 countries. 35 percent of all cases are settled after a simple request for payment by COPYTRACK. The average value of such re-licensing of images is 694 euro. Another 55 percent of all cases are paid after claim enforcement. On average COPYTRACK obtained a total of 1430 euro. The portal bases its fees on the court approved MFM-overview. The goal of Marcus Schmitt is always the economic and fair post-licensing for the user. Often this leads to further business relations between creators and former image thieves. COPYTRACK always stands in for the entire cost risk of its customers, including all legal proceedings. The service is completely free of charge. Only in case of success, COPYTRACK receives a success commission. When Marcus Schmitt and his team are successful, up to 70% of the sum obtained go to the copyright owners.
The graphic „Top 10 countries in image theft“ can be downloaded here.
Contact COPYTRACK:
Andrea Feustel, Rosenthaler Strasse 34/35, 10178 Berlin
andrea.feustel@COPYTRACK.com, Tel: +49 – 30 – 809.332.933, Fax: +49 – 30 – 809.332.999
About COPYTRACK:
COPYTRACK (www.COPYTRACK.com) was founded in 2015 by Marcus Schmitt and now employs around 25 people from legal, IT, customer service and finance. The service is aimed at, among other, to photographers, publishers, image agencies and e-commerce providers, and includes a risk-free search of the world wide Internet; According to photos uploaded by the users at COPYTRACK with a hit accuracy of 98 percent. The customers define images used without a license and even determine the amount of subsequent fees supported by an automatic license calculator on the portal. COPYTRACK is fully responsible for out-of-court resolutions in 140 countries as well as a legal resolutions in the relevant areas of copyright law. Only if the license has been successfully licensed, the rights holder receives up to 70 percent of the agreed sum. The pure search function is free of charge.
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