The Texas Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Meta for its use of facial recognition, alleging Facebook collected the biometric data of millions of Texans without consent. The state is reportedly seeking damages that could exceed $500 billion.
Facebook has announced that it is shuttering its Face Recognition system as part of what it is billing as a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in its products.
The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) has released a new version of its Photo Metadata standard that includes two new properties aimed at making photos more accessible to those with disabilities, such as the blind.
If you're keeping track today, the score is Big Corporations: 1, Photographers: 1. Because while Carol Highsmith might have all-but-lost her epic lawsuit against Getty Images, a photographer in Germany came out on top when he took Facebook to court.
How well does your favorite photo hosting and/or sharing service handle the copyright information and EXIF data of your photographs? How do the popular services stack up against one another in this regard?
Metadata handling isn't often discussed when photo sites are compared, but that's what the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) has been devoting an entire study to. The organization has published its findings regarding which companies play nicely with your metadata, and which pretend it's not there.
EXIF data embedded in an image file can shed quite a bit of information about a photo, including how it was created and the owner of the copyright. It's useful, but can be easily stripped away. A new consortium led by three organizations (IPTC, 4A's, and ANA) is pushing to make metadata permanent.