The American Society of Picture Professionals has released guidelines entitled “ASPP’s Best Practices for Locating Copyright Owners of Photographic and Visual Art”. This guide is intended to be a “living document” and will be continually updated as new registries and technologies become available. This version 2.0 contains many useful links to organizations and other places where one can access information.

The guide can be found at the ASPP website.

Executive Director, Cathy Sachs, expressed the following thoughts: “Especially in light of the Orphan Works pending legislation, it was our hope that these guidelines would be helpful in locating copyright holders, and that they might eventually aid in the construction of the defined "diligent search". This in turn, we hoped, would minimize the flood of "orphans" that might be created by inadequate search procedures. We feel that none of our members would benefit from that.”

The American Society of Picture Professional (ASPP) is a community of image experts committed to sharing their experience and knowledge throughout the industry. This non-profit association provides professional networking and educational opportunities for those who create, edit, research, license, manage or publish pictures. For more information go to www.aspp.com or contact the Executive Director Cathy Sachs at cathy@aspp.com