The Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) Coalition has published the Universal Picture Licensing Glossary, a free resource providing industry-standard definitions for more than 1,300 terms used in transactions involving photography and illustration. The glossary is the first component of PLUS, industry standards created and approved by a worldwide coalition of art buyers, photographers, illustrators, publishers, graphic designers...

Sotheby's Institute of Art-London is offering a master's program in historic and contemporary photography, starting in September 2006. The MA in Photography, Historic and Contemporary, is intended to reflect the shift in the way that photography is received and understood. Master's candidates will acquire the skills needed to appreciate and analyze photography in terms of intention, production, encounter and interpretation, better preparing them for careers in art with specializations in the photographic medium.

The course will look at photography's role...

Because the advent of digital photographic technology is rapidly changing the image marketplace, a working group representing digital imaging professionals and allied trade groups and manufacturers has drafted the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG).

Gaps in creative and quality control have led to confusion, inequities, loss of quality and unnecessary expense, according to the working group. In addition, the lack of transparencies or reference prints has left a void...

The U.S. Copyright Office has issued new interim regulations regarding the registration of unpublished works being prepared for commercial distribution in media that the Register of Copyrights determines have had a history of pre-release infringement. The office also sought comments on whether use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser would create difficulties in the preregistration process.

The preregistration process was outlined in the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, and was intended to give artists protection against pre-release infringement of their work prior to authorized commercial distribution. Originally, the regulations required...

Bad timing and remote locations, rather than media sloppiness, were the main factors that contributed to initially erroneous press reports about the Sago, W.Va., mine disaster that killed 12, according to Todd Maisel, a staff photographer for the New York Daily News.

Hundreds of journalists from around the country traveled to Sago to document the rescue attempts, and photographs of the waiting families dominated almost every front page. On the NPPA website, Maisel, who also is Region 2 associate director for the National Press Photographers Association, described his experience...

In what owner Roy Robinson calls a refocusing of the company's business lines, ProLab is closing its consumer-oriented Retail, ProZone and Portrait divisions to focus exclusively on commercial, large-format point-of-sale graphics. The retail photo-processing industry has declined substantially because amateur photographers now print at home or get prints from Wal-Mart or Costco, noted Robinson, in explaining the decision.

The company's commercial division, ProLab West, provides image manipulation, prepress, printing, kitting and distributing of large-format digital images to clients such as Restoration Hardware, Smith & Hawken, Tommy Bahama, Costco, Hannah Andersson and Storables.

Although the commercial division will remain at ProLab's headquarters in Seattle, the ProZone, consumer retail and portrait sales counters at that location have been closed. Approximately 25 employees...

ShootSmarter University in Aurora, Ill., recently finished construction of its new facility. The 6,200-square-foot building includes six shooting bays fitted with up-to-date equipment. The facility has been designed to provide natural lighting conditions as well as artificial ones. Studios have a choice of Mac or PC rolling workstations and Monaco calibrated monitors and printers. The file processing room contains five computer stations complete with printers and a 5,000-dpi scanner.

ShootSmarter offers four-day courses that feature hands-on training. Current offerings include Image Control, Color Management, Monitor Calibration, Creativity, Business Strategy and Effective Workflow.

Zuma Press, an independent press agency and wire service, won the contract for exclusive worldwide rights to syndicate the picture content of the weekly Sporting News, with in excess of 700,000 images dating back more than 118 years. The Sporting News archive has been incorporated into Zuma's web site, zumapress.com, and made available for immediate syndication by clients around the world.

Highlights include portraits of baseball's early stars by Charles M. Conlon, plus more than 300,000 historical, black-and-white images that document baseball throughout most of the 20th century. Nearly as many images cover football, basketball and hockey.

The American Society of Media Photographers has posted a new copyright tutorial on the public area of its web site at asmp.org/copyrightt. Although modern law gives independent photographers an automatic copyright at the moment a picture is taken, certain procedures must be followed to obtain the maximum legal protection for the photographer's rights. The tutorial details those procedures, providing step-by-step instructions and annotated sample forms.

In addition, the tutorial explores several copyright-related issues of importance to photographers, such as pictures of public buildings and the distinctions that courts use in deciding whether two images are substantially similar.

Sports Illustrated has launched a new web site featuring the magazine's photography at sipictures.com. The site was designed for photo editors, art buyers and corporate clients interested in licensing the images that have been appearing in the magazine since 1954.

The inventory is drawn from Sports Illustrated's archive of more than 3 million pictures. The online gallery, which will be updated continuously, contains a broad range of sports images, from athlete portraits to behind-the-scenes coverage of major sporting events. Among the photographers represented are the magazine's 18 current staff photographers, as well as more than 100 of its contributing photographers, including Walter Iooss Jr., Neil Leifer, John Zimmerman and Hy Peskin.