Do You Register Your Images with the Copyright Office?
[by Susan Carr]
Only a small percentage of photographers register their work with the copyright office. ASMP wants that to change.
We have new resources to help:
- Read ASMP’s recommended Best Practices for registering your work.
- Attend one of our “Registration Workshops” traveling the country.
- Watch our new podcast on the steps to register unpublished work.
Registering your work gives you the full benefit of copyright law. If you do not care enough about your photographs to take this step, why should anyone else?
5 Responses to 'Do You Register Your Images with the Copyright Office?'
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So right! Been registering for years and actually in talks with a lawyer now about a case. If you do register your chances at getting a lawyer to take your case also increase dramatically as well as your chance to get judgment. Hopefully this particular issue won’t get escalated, but registering my copyrights has been key to being able to effectively go after violators.
As of 2010, I register all new photographs with the Copyright Office. I’m unsure about my older images, though. Since even posting on Flickr is considered being published, I hate to separate the images into different collections for published and non-published submissions. It’s a bit of a pain.
It can be a bother, but you must register published and unpublished separately.
Use these resources to help determine the status of older work and how to register it.
Defining published and unpublished https://asmp.org/tutorials/published-or-unpublished.html
Steps to register published work https://asmp.org/tutorials/registering-published-images.html
Guide to terms of copyright http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
I have been following the ASMP tutorials on copyright registration for the last year registering all of my new work before I publish it in any way or deliver it to a client.
I still need to go through my legacy work to separate the published/unpublished and register it accordingly.
The biggest problem for me is this: in the digital age everyone wants to post things faster, and immediately if possible. Get images rushed to a client, post it to a blog, your website… keep it all fresh. I do my best to register as much work as possible at the same time to save money on the registration costs. $35 isn’t that bad of a fee, but it can add up if you are registering all the time.
Excellent posting, Registering copyright is more important then ever. I set up my eCO account earlier this year. This new system really makes it easy and at only $35 per deposit why wouldn’t you register?
Keep up the great work Susan