American Society for Collective Rights Licensing

Who We Are

ASCRL, The American Society for Collective Rights Licensing, Inc., is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit collective management organization (CMO) for visual art authors and rights owners. We collect royalties and distribute them to our members based upon representation agreements that we have with other collecting societies around the world. Our intention is to provide you with an ongoing revenue stream from reprographic funds because you are an author or rights owner in visual work.
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ASCRL works to maximize the return to rights holders and minimize collection and distribution expenses. ASCRL is the only author and rights holder created CMO that is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit organization in the U.S. We are on your side working to help you sustain your businesses and improve your livelihood at no cost to you. Learn more
Leadership

​ASCRL is managed by its board of directors: All directors serve, in their capacity as directors, as volunteers without compensation.  The current board members have extensive experience and knowledge in the area of collective rights management both here in the United States and around the world. 
​James Lorin Silverberg, Esq.
Chief Executive Officer
James Lorin Silverberg has a long and distinguished record as an advocate for illustrators and photographers.  As the Director of Litigation for The Intellectual Property Group, PLLC, he has spent four decades litigating cases representing authors throughout the United States.  He has acted as Legal Counsel for The American Center for Design, the Graphic Design Education Association, and the Shoshin Illustrator Society. He is founding counsel for the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA/Washington), and the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA/MD). Silverberg has also acted as counsel for American Photographic Artists (APA) and serves as legal counsel to The White House News Photographer's Association (WHNPA). He is a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, and he has  appeared in intellectual property cases in 18 federal courts around the country.  He is a member of the Art Law Committee of the DC Bar and of the New York Bar.  He is formerly a Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law where he taught Art & Entertainment Law,  and he has been an Adjunct Faculty at the Virginia Commonwealth University, Dept. of Communications, Art, and Design, where he taught Legal Aspects of Studio Management. He has been a lecturer at the George Washington University, Publication Specialist program, and at the Corcoran School of the Arts where he taught Art, Business, and the Law. He has been a passionate supporter of artists’ rights, earning him a high level of respect from artists’ organizations, publishers, industry partners, lawmakers, and government agencies in the US and globally. He has won awards for his service to the arts community, including an award from Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts.  Silverberg earned his Juris Doctor degree at The National Law Center, The George Washington, University, and his B.A./Honors from the State University of New York College at Purchase, where he majored in Critical Theory of Art.
Taina Litwak,
Director
Taina Litwak began her career working for 10 years as staff illustrator with the Walter Reed Biosystemactics Unit at the Smithsonian Institution, after earning a BS in Biology and a BFA in Printmaking.  She left in 1993 to start a freelance illustration business. She received her Board Certification as a medical illustrator in 1994. Since 2010 she has been the staff illustrator at the US Dept. of Agriculture’s Systematic Entomology Lab, at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.

She works in digital and traditional media.  Her markets include magazines and scientific journals, trade and text books, advertising, and museum and medical legal exhibits.  Her clients have included the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Mosquito Control Association, Carnegie Institute, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Chanticleer Press, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Entomological Society of America, the Endocrine Society, Maryland Public Television, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Numerous law firms in the DC metro area, Saunders College Publishing, Science News, Smithsonian Institution, StackPole Books, Timber Press, Wm. C. Brown Communications, Inc., etc.

Her volunteer work with professional organizations began with serving as Executive Director of the Washington Women’s Arts Center and as a Board member for 3 years 1982-84.  Since then she served 6 years on the Board of Directors of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI), as National President and as Treasurer, as local GNSI Chapter President, 4 years on the Board of the Vesalius Trust and is the current Vice President of the Illustrator’s Club of DC, MD and VA.  In the capacity of GNSI representative, she also served on the Board of the 1994 World Congress on Biomedical Communications during the 2 year planning process.
 John Simson, Esq.
Director
John Simson, Esq., most recently served as the Executive Director of SoundExchange from 2001-2010, an organization he helped launch in 2001. SoundExchange collects royalties from internet and satellite radio services on behalf of recording artists and record labels. The organization is now responsible for distributions greater than Ten Billion Dollars since its inception.  John's career has also included stints as a manager, handling the career of 5X Grammy winner, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, special advisor to Harry Belafonte for music and television projects, and a 30 year career as an entertainment lawyer advising clients on copyright and business issues in film, television, music and the visual arts.  He, has himself received an Emmy nomination for his music supervision of the PBS series, "American Roots Music." He was named the Outstanding Volunteer Lawyer by Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts on their 10th Anniversary celebration. John was at the forefront of the battle for artist's rights and their ability to be paid for their work online, and has been featured on NBC Nightly News, The New York Times, WSJ, Marketplace, CNN and many other news outlets. John is a frequent lecturer on music industry and copyright issues and currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. He  is also Chairman of the District of Columbia Bar, Art, Entertainment, Media & Sports Law Committee. He is a Board member of CINE, the Musicianship and the Music Manager's Forum. He is also a 1994 Alumni of Nashville's Leadership Music Program and is a past President of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Grammy organization. John has previously taught Entertainment Law at Washington College of Law and Georgetown University Law Center....John earned his Juris Doctor at SUNY Buffalo Law School, his M.A. at SUNY Albany School of Criminal Justice,  had his B.A. from SUNY Albany.
Michael Grecco
Director
Michael Grecco is a multiple award-winning industry leader best known for his iconic celebrity portraits and visionary magazine covers, editorials, and advertising spreads for NBS/Universal, GE, Pfizer, HBO, Kodak, ABC, IBM, Yahoo!, ESPN, Wired, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Premier, MAXIM and more. His distinguished work is regularly featured in prestigious galleries such as: Louis Stern, G. Ray Hawkins, Stephen Cohen and Fahey Klein.

ASCRL Advisory Board

ASCRL has a distinguished Advisory Board composed of industry and trade group representatives, leading academic scholars, and licensing experts. 
Marie T. Dauenheimer, MA, CMI, FAMI 
Marie Dauenheimer is a Board Certified Medical Illustrator working in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area. She specializes in creating medical illustrations and animations for scientific journals, grant proposals, websites, apps, interactive media, as well as augmented and virtual reality projects.  Marie’s professional background includes a Master’s Degree in Medical Illustration and Biological from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is board certified in medical illustration (CMI) and a Fellow of the Association of Medical Illustrators (FAMI).  Marie is active with her professional association, the Association of Medical Illustrators; she is a past Secretary and Director to the Board of Governors. Marie is a Trustee for the Vesalius Trust for Visual Communication in the Health Sciences, and a Past President of the Illustrators Club of Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia.  Marie’s many clients include the American College of Cardiology, American Society for Hematology, American Physical Therapy Association, U.S. Health and Human Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and numerous advertising and public relations firms.​​
David Goldman
David Goldman Agency
David Goldman, is the principal of the world renowned David Goldman Agency.  Since DGA was originally established in New York in 1980 it has been providing award winning illustration to advertising agencies, graphic design firms, magazine, newspapers, book publishers, corporations, licensees, animation production companies, and a world of image users. In fact, DGA artists have been used in some of the most successful print and television ad campaigns in the world, and over 600 awards for illustration excellence have been bestowed upon DGA artists and animation designers to date. Now the agency is well known as the exclusive representative of a small boutique group of the world's premier professional commercial illustrators, designers, authors, and TV show creators. David has also been involved in developing, producing, and selling television properties with David Russo in partnerships with Mark Burnett Productions, Magic Johnson, Paula Abdul, MTV, USA Network, NBC, Discovery Channel, GSN, and most recently in 2019 with ITV.
 Joe Azar, Esq.
Joe Azar has been on the Board of Illustrators Club DC/MD/VA, almost since its founding in 1986. He has written frequently on copyright and legal issues of concern to illustrators, and is a former member of the Graphic Artist's Guild for whom he has updated a chapter on professional issues in the 7th Edition of the Pricing and Ethical Guidelines. He is also a former member of the National Cartoonists Society. To say that Joe has been an advocate for illustrators barely scratches the surface of the decades of work Joe has devoted to the field. Joe has extensive knowledge of the development of collective rights licensing in the United States based and has many years of involvement with collective rights licensing issues. Since 1976 Joe has been a member of the District of Columbia and Virginia bars. ​
Whitney Sherman
MICA, Director, MFA in Illustration Practice, Co-Director, Dolphin Press & Print
​Prior to her career as an award-winning illustrator, she has worked in design, advertising, packaging, and television. As undergraduate Chair of Illustration at MICA from 2000-2010, she grew the department into the largest at the College with innovative interdisciplinary courses, a concentration in book arts, and programming geared for the gaming industry. She is the founding Director of the MFA in Illustration Practice program, and co-founder of the new MA in Illustration at MICA. As Co-Director of Dolphin Press & Print @ MICA, she directed book and print projects with Henrik Drescher/Wu Wing Yee, Peter Kuper, and Michael Bartalos. Sherman's current work in limited edition house wares and prints, under the brand Pbody Dsign, represents her view of the illustrator's expanding roles.Her clients include national magazines such as the NY Times, Business Week, Forbes, design firms such as Tolleson Design, Pentagram, Ronn Campisi Design, and Karnes-Prickett, national institutions such as the Templeton Foundation, Ad Council, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Red Cross, and publishers such as Clarkson Potter, Random House, and St. Martin's Press. Her commission to create the art for the US Postal Service Breast Cancer Research Stamp, now in its 20th year, is the longest running postal issue in US history. It has raised over $83 million in research funding.

Sherman has illustrated several books, and recently wrote Playing with Sketches from which she has conducted workshops in Mexico, China and the US. She has contributed to The Education of an Illustrator, and Educating Illustrators, both by Marshall Arisman & Steve Heller.

Her illustration and design work has been exhibited at the Norman Rockwell Museum, National Postal Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Israel Museum, Axis Gallery/Tokyo, and the Society of Illustrators Gallery of American Illustration in NY. Sherman initiated the exhibitions Comics on the Verge, and Another Voice : Political Illustration from The Progressive, 1982-1999 at MICA. Notable public lectures include the Hallmark Residency Lecturer at the University of Kansas and the Closing Keynote at the Educators Symposium at the Society of Illustrators NY. She was also President of ICON5, the national illustration conference in New York.

Recently, Sherman served as an associate editor and one of fifty authors on The History of Illustration text book, a new, comprehensive analysis of illustration practices throughout time and within cultures of the world. The book includes numerous color plates, an extensive timeline, and text boxes that examine illustration through theoretical and material perspectives.
Jim Griffin
Jim Griffin is focused on the digital delivery of media with a focus on monetization. While Chief Technology Officer at Geffen Records he led an effort to release the first full-length song (Aerosmith’s Head First, June, 1994) and Hollywood’s first web server. As President of Network Licensing, he ran Warner Music Group’s effort to build a campus-based collective license for music . He has worked as an advisor to the Director of Copyrights at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and he has appeared before both the Senate and the House Judiciary Committees on copyright issues.He has also appeared as an expert witness before the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel.  Jim has taught music copyright law at NoVa. He has served as an International Representative for the Newspaper Guild (Media Workers Guild). He attended the University of Kentucky and the University of Pittsburgh.
John Harrington
For three decades, John Harrington, an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and best-selling author has traveled the world creating visual stories of every day lives and history-making events through his camera.
His work has appeared in Life, Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. His images from the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001 are a part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Images from his work as a part of the team documenting the historic inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 are also a part of that same Smithsonian collection.

Harrington is formerly President of the White House News Photographers Association.  And he has served on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Media Photographers and the National Press Photographers Association.

Harrington is a San Francisco Bay area native. He graduated in 1990 from the Catholic University of America, with a political science degree. He worked as a photographer with The World & I, where he routinely covered the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon. Soon after, he began work with Black Star picture agency exclusively licensing his stock images and to fulfill assignments in Washington, DC. In addition to location assignments, Harrington has done extensive work for corporate clients, including Coca-Cola, SiriusXM Satellite Radio, Lockheed Martin, and the National Geographic Society, to name just a few. His original fine art images have been published across the United States. Harrington has produced three commissioned books for the Smithsonian and the third edition of his book Best Business Practices for Photographers, remains a bestseller.  Harrington is also a Native-American and has put his skills to use for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He believes in being a role model and mentor, educating influential businesspeople about the art and science of photography.

Harrington has lectured across the United States for the North American Nature Photographers Association, American Society of Media Photographers, Advertising Photographers of America (now American Photographic Artists), Professional Photographers of America, and the National Press Photographers Association.
Ramon Purcell
American Photographic Artists
David Trust
Professional Photographers Of America
Bob Mason
Society of Animal Artists ​
Bill Rosenblatt
Bill Rosenblatt is president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consulting firm. He is an adjunct professor in the Music Business Program at NYU, and he is program chair and co-producer of the annual Copyright and Technology conferences.

GiantSteps’ clients include content providers and digital media technology companies, ranging from early stage startups to multinationals, as well law and public policy entities and investment firms worldwide.  Bill has served as an expert witness in several litigations related to copyright and digital media technologies.  He has advised public policy entities on digital copyright and technology issues in the United States, Europe, and South Korea.
Before founding GiantSteps in 2000, Bill held technology management positions in the publishing industry as well as digital media market strategy and consulting roles in the computer industry, and he was CTO of an e-learning startup at Columbia University. He began his career as a software engineer in data communications at Motorola.

Bill is author of the book Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology (Wiley, 2001), technical books published by O’Reilly Media, and several whitepapers, book chapters and journal articles on digital media and copyright. He has spoken at conferences on five continents and has guest lectured at various universities and law schools.
Bill has degrees in computer science from Princeton and the University of Massachusetts, and continuing education in business and finance from NYU, Harvard, and USC.  He is a member of the Book Industry Study Group, Music Business Association, Open Music Initiative, and the Copyright Society of the USA.
​John D. Mason, Esq.
General Counsel
John D. Mason is the President of the Board of Directors for the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, Advisory Board member of Veterans in Media and Entertainment, and is an adjunct faculty  member teaching Entertainment Law and Intellectual Property Law at UDC Law School. He is also a past adjunct faculty member George Mason University where he taught Art and the Law. John also lectures regularly at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the Art as Applied to Medicine Master’s program. John is well known as the principal of Copyright Counselors LLC and Mason Literary, a Washington D.C. based art and entertainment and intellectual property law firm and literary agency. His practice focuses on copyright and trademark registrations and transactional matters, licensing and contracts, litigation, copyright infringement, publishing and media issues, defamation, and commercial matters relating to creative industries. He works with writers, artists, filmmakers, photographers and creative people and companies of all kinds to protect, promote and productively exploit their work. John is admitted to practice in Maryland and the District of Columbia, the United States District Courts for the District of Columbia and Maryland, and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  John attended Loyola University of New Orleans for both undergraduate and law school.