Web Statement of Rights and Usage Terms, explained

Two fields about using the photo

The copyright notice says who owns a photo. It says nothing about what someone else may do with it. Two XMP properties fill that gap:

• Web Statement of Rights, xmpRights:WebStatement: a URL pointing to a page that describes the image's rights and how to license it.
• Rights Usage Terms, xmpRights:UsageTerms: free text with the terms themselves, such as Editorial use only.

Both come from Adobe's XMP Rights Management schema, and the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard adopted them.

The Web Statement of Rights

The Web Statement is a link and nothing else. Point it at a page you control that will stay online: a licensing page, a contact page, or a page about the image itself. Good targets include:

• your portfolio's licensing or contact page;
• a page for the specific image, if you sell licences per image;
• a Creative Commons licence URL, if you publish under one.

Use a full address with https://. Many readers turn it into a clickable link. Photoshop and Bridge show it in File Info as Copyright Info URL.

Google Images can show licensing details for an image, and one of the sources it reads is this field, together with a Licensor URL from the IPTC Extension. How and when search engines use it is up to them, so treat it as a helpful signal with no guarantee attached.

Usage Terms

Usage Terms hold a short statement of what is allowed. Examples:

• Editorial use only. Contact for commercial licensing.
• Licensed to Harbour Press for the 2026 spring issue.
• CC BY 4.0

Like dc:rights, it is a language alternative: it can hold one version per language, and most readers show the default. Keep it to a sentence or two. The full licence belongs on the page your Web Statement links to.

Usage Terms are free text, so software can't act on them. They are for people. Write them for a reader who has your photo open and wants to know, quickly, whether they may use it. If your terms are more than a sentence or two, summarise them here and link to the full text through the Web Statement.

Only in XMP

Neither field has an EXIF or IIM equivalent. They exist only in XMP. That has two consequences:

• software that reads only EXIF or IIM never sees them;
• a tool or service that strips XMP while keeping EXIF removes them silently.

If a photo will pass through such a tool, put your website in the notice or the Credit Line as well, in a few words. Then check a processed copy with the copyright checker, which lists the Web Statement and Usage Terms beside the other fields.

Formats differ here too. JPEG, HEIC, PNG and TIFF can all carry an XMP packet, so these fields can live in any of them. A RAW file keeps them in its sidecar.

How they fit with the other rights fields

Taken together, a well-described photo answers four questions:

1. Who made it? Creator.
2. Who owns it? Copyright Notice, and Copyright Status (xmpRights:Marked).
3. How should it be credited? Credit Line.
4. How may it be used, and where can I ask? Usage Terms and the Web Statement.

None of these fields grants or refuses permission by itself. They tell an honest reader where to look and whom to ask.

Choosing a link that lasts

A Web Statement is written into files that may circulate for decades. A link that breaks in two years sends every reader to an error page.

• Use your own domain. A page on a platform you don't control can move or vanish.
• Prefer a stable address, such as https://example.com/licensing, over one tied to a campaign or a year.
• If you redesign your site, keep the old address working with a redirect.
• Make the page useful: say who you are, how to request a licence and how to reach you.

The IPTC Extension also has a Licensor field with its own URL, for the party that grants licences, such as an agency. If someone else sells licences for your work, their licensing page may belong there, with your own page in the Web Statement.

Setting them once

Your licensing page rarely changes, which makes the Web Statement a field to set once and forget. In Copyrighted, a Rights Profile holds your website and your usage terms. The app writes them to xmpRights:WebStatement and xmpRights:UsageTerms each time you stamp photos, along with the notice, creator and credit in every layer the format has.

Questions