Zefa Chooses PicScouts Image Management Service

Dietzenbach and Düsseldorf, March 20th, 2004 - Today PicScout announced that zefa visual group chose its Image-Tracker Service to detect copyright infringements on German commercial web sites. So far more than 200,000 zefa images are monitored by PicScout.
The service is based on the PicScout proprietary image recognition technology. It even detects images that have been cropped, resized, or colorized. By using this service zefa answers the increasing number of infringements in the Internet. "The web is a very important channel for the stock agencies. But even password protected areas can not prevent unauthorized use of our rights managed images", explains Tomas Speight, CEO of zefa visual group.

The stock agencies' damage caused by the infringements is estimated to several million Euros.
"The PicScout solution does not only protect the images but also turns unauthorized users into paying customers", states Joachim Lieser, CEO of the newly founded German PicScout subsidiary. "Many German stock agencies have been waiting for such a service and will surely follow zefa."

The German subsidiary is located in Dietzenbach, near Frankfurt, and will present the PicScout solution to the German market for the first time on Picta in Hamburg between April 1st and 3rd.

About PicScout
PicScout offers solutions for image owners to control and protect their images in the information age. PicScout's image recognition solution enables the comparison of image data bases with individual images that are being used in commercial web sites. Based on this technology, PicScout provides a number of services to the stock photography industry. These services enable stock photo agencies to enforce their copyrights, better control their assets, develop new billing methods and increase their customer base.

About zefa visual media gmbh
zefa visual media gmbh is the largest European group in the professional stock imagery market, and currently ranks number three worldwide. The main office of zefa visual media group is in D üsseldorf, Germany. There is another sales office in Hamburg as well as 16 subsidiaries and partner agencies around the world, all forming the zefa visual media group.
A close strategic alliance exists between the zefa visual media group and the stock photo agency Masterfile with headquarters in Toronto, Canada. The range of images offered by zefa covers a wide selection of rights-managed and royalty-free collections. In addition, zefa visual media also has its own global network of creative top photographers.
Over 30 group partners license the usage rights to the group´s images via its global image portal
www.zefaimages.com

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