Interesting stats and info about the International Press Telecommunications Council’s technical standards for exchange of news information:

1.) The International Press Telecommunications Council publishes 14+ technical standards that are intended for the business-to-business exchange of news among news agencies, other news providers and publishers.

2.) At least one or two IPTC standards are in use at virtually every newspaper and news web site in the world.
Publishers use IPTC standards to save money and improve the ability of their news products to be used by customers.

3.) IPTC standards for news exchange are available for downloading at no cost – and there are no royalties or fees.
The only source of income for IPTC is membership dues. Membership currently consists of more than 50 organizations and individuals worldwide.

4.) All IPTC standards are designed to be independent of any specific language. 
Although our publications are written in English and meetings are conducted in English, every recent standard is usable by any written language that is supported by Unicode.

5.) More than 70 software applications support IPTC Standards.
Software developers seamlessly integrate IPTC standards into their products – often in subtle ways that are not obvious to customers.

More information:
IPTC.org
IPTC Standards
Contact: Michael Steidl, mdirector@iptc.org