What I Learned on my Way to the Commons

[by Richard Kelly]

It is my perspective that the role of copyright is to promote publication. Copyright is the engine that allows professionals to grant permission and collect money for the use of their work, that permission is a license. I see no reason for this to change. The fundamental change is how our images are published and what publishing really means in a world wide searchable channel like the Internet.

As commercial photographers our client relationships are primarily creating photographs on assignment or licensing existing images as stock to satisfy a need to sell an idea or to tell a story. Many of us routinely work for the same handful of clients for years. In this regard much of our business practice will not change. But with a new world of image buyers at their browsers, how do we engage them?

As professional photographers in the 21st century we need these things, universal image search with a licensing component, simple and easy to understand industry usage licenses with representative icons and a searchable images and license registry.

These are all possible now.

One model that is worth looking at very closely is Creative Commons. Built on top of Copyright law, this non-profit has built a series of iconic easy to read licenses that explain to the user what permissions they have when using a particular photograph. The image may be embedded with the license and with attribution which is a primary part of all the CC licenses. The simple language icon is built on top of a legal license that a lawyer could only love but one that is translatable in most languages around the globe. I wonder how many of my licenses are universally readable? Many photographers mistakenly assume that Creative Commons is just free pictures, which is just part of the story but not the only story, I suggest reading this.

If the standard copyright is ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, think of Creative Commons as SOME RIGHTS RESERVED.

For most professionals the CC licenses may not be part of your business plan, but some photographers have built their businesses around a hybrid model. This is something each photographer has to establish on their own, but what is interesting is the CC+ option, this model built around the Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses, but with a component to license commercial rights. Yes, to make M-O-N-E-Y. Read about it here.

By the way, for you first timers, if users of Creative Commons Licenses fail to follow the license, they are infringing the copyright like any other infringer and all courses of legal remedies are available. Registration Counts and your photographs should be registered with the Copyright Office to protect your investment.

Creative Commons licenses are not for all photographers, but we can learn a number of important lessons,

•    Make licensing iconic and simple to understand in all languages.

•    Make attribution a basic requirement of all licenses.

•    Make it searchable and embeddable.

Richard Kelly is a photographer and educator living in Pittsburgh. As President of ASMP,  he is a progressive advocate for copyright and professionalism. Learn more about Richard here.

Creative Commons Licenses are Unnecessary and Dangerous

[by Leslie Burns]

I hear lots of people say how CC makes “sharing” possible and promotes the “democratization” of creative culture. Really, it is the emperor’s new clothes of IP licensing–false, dangerous, and unneeded.

For centuries (there is specific references to licensing in docs dating as far back as 1474!), traditional licensing has permitted creators and users to work together to develop new innovations, new art, new technologies. As the text book we used in my Licensing class in law school puts it (Licensing Intellectual Property: Law and Application pp. 3-4, emphasis added):
[...] it enables creators of information, technology, and intellectual property to do the sharing and collaboration that lead to the creation of new information products, from the production of an epic motion picture to the development of complex software. In other words, licensing underlies technological and creative innovation. [...] licensing enables parties of all sizes and from all sectors to bring information products to market in a multitude of ways. In other words, licensing also underlies business model innovation.”

Think about all the innovations of the 20th century alone, these were all done under the traditional system of licensing. No creativity or innovation was suppressed. The internet was created and grew, very successfully, under traditional licensing!

Moreover, the ability to share (free) has always been inherent in the traditional licensing system. If someone took IP from a creator and the creator didn’t have a problem with it, the creator simply did not pursue the user. An implied license could be said to exist. No problem.

So, I urge all creative professionals not to get sucked into the rhetoric of “remixing” and “democratization of culture” etc. that is promulgated by CC. Did you know that if you license a work using CC, you can never revoke that license later? And that each user under that license can sublicense your work (same terms)? It’s like a virus-license! You lose all control, forever.

You have all the tools you need under the traditional licensing system. You can give and share on your own terms, but you can protect and monetize efficiently as well. The language of the CC is seductive and sounds ever so good, especially to the creative mind that loves collaboration and working with others, but its a siren’s call to your professional doom.

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Leslie Burns is a creative/marketing consultant and not a lawyer (yet). She is taking the summer off from law school to work on a 2nd ed. of her photo biz book. Follow her at burnsautoparts.com/blog, facebook.com/burnsautoparts, and twitter.com/LeslieBAP.

Creative Commons, Friend or Foe?

[by Jim Cavanaugh]

Ask most photographers about Creative Commons and they will likely respond that it is just a tool for people to use images without having to pay for them. At first glance this may seem true. Creative Commons allows people to use photographs and other intellectual property created by others in several broad categories of use. These are broad licenses where creators receive no compensation. This is the part that most photographers see as a devaluation of copyright or “giving images away for free”.

But is it? Creative Commons does offer licenses. They may not be the kind of licenses we want to grant for our work, but they are licenses none the less. What do they do? The facilitate licensing. They provide a mechanism for a copyright owner and an end user to negotiate specific uses and operate with respect for current copyright laws. In essence, the end user obtains a proper license that the copyright owner grants for the use of their work. As long as the user abides by the limitations granted in the Creative Commons license, they may use the image without fear of infringing the copyright owner’s copyrights.

While the current range of licenses available through Creative Commons does not address the licensing needs of most transactions between professional photographers and their clients, it does offer a model to build on. The strength of the model is that it is fast, easy, available and widely recognized. The traditional process of obtaining licenses from photographers tends to be slow, complicated and without standards. However,  the PLUS Coalition has done tremendous work in trying to bring standardization to this process.

Technology has changed the expectations of how users expect to obtain content. Creative Commons may not meet our commercial needs and is geared to specific markets. However it is an important first step in solving the issues on how users of content can easily and quickly obtain legal rights to utilize that content.

Can Creative Commons model be a guide for us to build or utilize new infrastructure to license our work?

This License is Non Transferable

[by Steve Whittaker]

Once in a while I will meet a marketing person who demands the right to allow property owners, contractors and other entities unrestricted use of our images without additional fees. Some have expressed their right to resell photographer’s images to recover their firm’s cost from an assignment or worse, make a profit from our intellectual property, the images we create.

They may have been influenced in the past by photographers who allow unlimited and unrestricted usage to any third party firms such as contractors, vendors or manufacturers who want them as part of a package and this is a dangerous trend.

There are some photographers who have been shooting for years and didn’t care about the long-term issues or the loss of potential revenue, not to mention the potential damage they are causing to our industry. These photographers are giving away potential income but worse, they have created a culture or a norm by allowing their clients to walk all over them.

If you have not already done so, it would be in your best interest to add the NON TRANSFERABLE clause to third party requestors into your contracts. That offers further protection to your intellectual property.  It also will give you a stronger potential for future income. You will need to monitor and enforce that issue but clients will pay attention and you have the potential for making a better profit from your work.

Invest some time exploring the www.asmp.org web site. Start with the link to commerce and publications on business practices. Browsing through the legal resources section can empower you to move your career forward with a better understanding of how to create stronger terms and conditions, licensing, copyright registration and beyond.

Your estimate, contract and your terms and conditions need to be firm and well defined. Illustrate what the client is receiving. You also need to illustrate the limits of their license, the terms or period of use again. The information that you can down load from that site will surprise you and is well worth the time invested.

The key to making a better living in our profession is controlling the licensing of our images and protecting our future as ASMP photographers.” Empower yourself.

ASMP Copyright Symposium Videos

On April 21, 2010, the American Society of Media Photographers presented an important symposium in New York City addressing the sweeping changes in the way images are used and distributed. The symposium, Copyright and the New Economy: Issues & Trends Facing Visual Artists, was a big hit with the packed TimesCenter audience. According to ASMP President Richard Kelly, “During the coming year, ASMP plans to lead in moving forward on copyright issues and identifying sustainable business solutions for our changing world.”

Videos of individual presentations and the panel discussion are available here.

Copyright Is Important, But Not Like It Used To Be

[by Thomas Werner]

Copyright is an important right, it affirms ownership, allows us to protect our rights, helps control usage, and gives us the ability to collect damages when our imagery is misused. Though too few do so, as a content creator copyrighting your images, video, animation, etc., continues to be good business.

What has, and will continue to change, is the manifestation of your copyright in both the commercial and non-commercial marketplace. There are a number of forces changing the focus and function of copyright. The first is contractual, as clients continue to ask for ownership, or full rights of release in print and online, you will not only see individual ownership of imagery decline, but also see a rise in how imagery is used in the market place. Clients need to repurpose imagery in multiple forms. Video, photography, graphics, animation, etc., are put into the market with the hope that they are reposted and reused. That is what viral marketing is about, it drives the clients message deeper into the market place, and hopefully onto the personal pages of Facebook, Twitter, etc., at which point the posting of that image, ad, or video becomes a “personal recommendation” of the product, an end result that advertisers have been working to achieve for years.

This also changes the public’s perception regarding fair use. The general public is being “taught” that reuse of an image or video is good, to have a large number of people take or view your work for free it is a positive and normal practice. It is that perception that is driving the value out of your copyright and forcing companies to ask for outright ownership of your work. Given the nature of advertising, increased liability, and the need for viral communication, clients would be foolish not to ask for complete ownership or full rights of use.

In addition to the above, there is also generational gap in the perception of fair use and copyright, a change in how imagery is used to populate blogs and zines online, a move away from a “search based” (think Google) to a “socially based” (think Facebook) method of finding and receiving information, a move from computer to portable device based engagement with each other and media, and a need to redefine and expand educational fair use, all of which are and will affect the value and scope of your copyright as well. I will address these issues in later posts.

On the plus side, as greater control, corporatization, and monetization of the web continues to occur there will be greater control exerted over the use of content and how people pay for it. The desire for profit will drive the desire to exert greater control over content. On the downside, as a pure content producer you will see a decreasing slice of that pie. That doesn’t mean that you should not copyright your work, you should, but it does means that where and how those rights apply will most likely diminish, as will the amount you receive should your imagery be infringed.

Copyright & The New Economy: What I learned

[by Jay Kinghorn]

The Copyright & The New Economy symposium held on April 21st was, for me, an eye-opening event. As the moderator for Copyright and the New Economy, I did a lot of research leading up to the event. A common thread that ran through the research, the morning presenters and the afternoon panel discussion point to a publishing landscape for photographers that is radically different than today. This landscape, while challenging, holds tremendous promise for photographers willing to proactively seek out new opportunities and new ways of serving clients.

I’ve spent a good deal of time mulling over and replaying the kernels of information presented through the symposium, and here are a few lessons I’ve taken from the event.

- Be an explorer: Photographer Chase Jarvis seems to embody many of the traits I think will be essential for thriving in this new landscape. He’s willing to take risks and experiment in the services he delivers to clients and doesn’t tie himself to traditional notions of what a photographer should be if those notions aren’t serving him well today.

- Be a publisher: Brian Storm, of MediaStorm.org, clearly articulated his vision for the future of photojournalism-multimedia presentations that educate, raise awareness and generate profit for those sites willing to publish MediaStorm’s hard-hitting productions. Rather than looking at yourself as just a contributor to larger projects, consider expanding your vision to the big picture and “do it all.”

- Be your own advocate: Victor Perlman, ASMP’s General Council, traced the history of image licensing, describing photographers’ current situation as a convergence of several events. One primary cause is photographers abdicating licensing negotiations to stock agencies. Once photographers stopped controlling pricing negotiations, the market was ripe for commodification.

We live in a time of tremendous upheaval. Traditional industries are quickly collapsing and new ones are emerging. More content is being consumed than ever before. Though very few of us have a recipe for success in this new market, one thing is for sure, success is often based on one’s ability to adapt and as the ancient saying goes, fortune favors the bold!

Jay Kinghorn is a workflow trainer and consultant. His company, Kinghorn Visual helps companies use photos and video for marketing and outreach purposes.

Copyright Registration – Protecting Your Investment

[by Richard Kelly]

With The Copyright Act of 1976 and later revisions including the Berne Convention, artists were no longer required to register for copyright nor to provide copyright notice. In my opinion, these two facts have led to two decades of visual artists thinking that they were protecting their visual investments. For a commercial artist, registering the work prior to delivery to a client insures, in situation whereby a client fails to pay, the artist can use the copyright registration as a means of getting paid. Any attorney would rather pay an invoice then to be hauled into Federal Court for copyright infringement. If the work was registered prior to infringement the artist may be entitled to attorneys fee’s in addition to statutory damages.

Another advantage is one I experienced a decade ago, when a publisher / client called me after he had published a series of musician portraits for a fashion story. He had discovered a local newsweekly had scanned the image from the magazine for an advertisement for a local nightclub featuring the singer’s band. He wanted to know what I was going to do to protect his “exclusive” image? I was able to resolve the situation by working with the infringing publication to publish an apology, but without the registration prior to the infringement I did not have as big a stick to collect any real money.

I am sure that we rarely think of our assignments as investments, but my clients spend “real” money to build a visual brand with my photographs and if I do not register the photographs, I am falling short of my professional obligation.

If you shoot stock, personal projects for fine art, books or multimedia projects not registering your work is similar to leaving your front door unlocked while on vacation with out insurance.
Registration counts.

Monetization Matters

[by Judy Herrmann]

My Mother’s day gift this year included a leisurely morning that allowed me to make a small dent on my rapidly growing stockpile of New Yorker magazines (I love the New Yorker but I mean, seriously, does ANYone have time to read an entire magazine every single week!?!).

The issue I grabbed (March 29, 2010) included an article on Polyvore – a fashion website that encourages members to clip photos of clothes & accessories from all over the internet and create collages or “sets” demonstrating their sense of style.  The author, Alexandria Jacobs, likens the experience to “…playing paper dolls with real clothes.”

The question of who created, owns or paid for the creation of those photographs wasn’t raised anywhere in the article.  Now, before we get all outraged and up in arms and cry “it’s the Napster of the fashion photography world” let’s look a little deeper.

The creators of this website are tracking pretty much every click that users make.  The data they’re collecting has enormous value to the apparel industry, which has started to embrace and in some cases, even sponsor, Polyvore sets.  Well, sure, you say – they’ve got nothing to lose, they make their money from the clothes.

But, that same data has potentially even more value to photographers and other creators. Rather than using copyright to prohibit such uses of images, as the music industry has tried to do, why not try to monetize them instead?

Tracking the relationship between users of the internet and the data they touch is rapidly becoming an entrenched business model for everyone from major players like Google to small start-ups like Polyvore.  The next step – forging a connection between the data and its creator – is coming soon.  At the ASMP Copyright Symposium last month, Jeff Sedlik noted that the Picture Licensing Universal System (www.usePLUS.org) has developed machine-readable licensing codes and plans to launch a creator registry that will link images to their owners later this year.

We’ve learned from the music industry that trying to shut these sites down or arrest the users isn’t really viable.  If instead we embrace these technologies and find ways to work with sites and their users to make sure that the creators of the photographs and other content they’re appropriating receive fair and just compensation, we may just build system where everyone wins.

Acclaimed advertising & editorial photographer Judy Herrmann conducts seminars and one-on-one consultations that help people grow their businesses and build more satisfying careers. Judy@HSstudio.com

Copyright and Video

[by Gail Mooney]

As still photographers move and expand into video because of the convergence of their tools, they often ask me about copyright, licensing and usage and how to apply that to video. Essentially they are trying to apply a licensing business model from their still photography and sometimes that doesn’t work in video production.

The biggest distinction between shooting video and shooting still images is that for the most part a video camera operator is just one of the many creative people involved in a video production. So unless the camera operator is also the producer and in charge of the entire production, including the hiring of the crew, they will be working in a “work for hire” situation. One video project can’t have every collaborator on a project maintaining ownership of their part of the whole.

Depending on the job and the market you work in will ultimately determine who will maintain ownership, copyright and control. Generally speaking the end client or video production company holds the copyright to the finished production. This is why I made a conscious decision when I got into video many years ago, to position myself as a producer and not “just” a content provider. I wanted to maintain creative control and ownership of my projects.

But even in still photography these days, I see more and more “work for hire” contracts, and in market sectors like editorial where that wasn’t the case just five years ago. Sometimes I feel that in our efforts to protect copyright laws, we end up fighting for that right for big corporate entities that in turn grab those rights from the creators through lopsided contracts.

Something to think about – maybe with news eyes. Perhaps we need to start thinking of ourselves as “publishers” rather than just content providers. It’s never been more possible to be a publisher, because distribution has been democratized by the web, giving all of us a pipeline to a global audience.

It’s time to look at our creative businesses with new eyes and not just on the creative part of the process – but the business part as well. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts and ideas on this topic.

Post Symposium Thoughts

[by Richard Kelly]

If content is king, distribution is its queen. What does distribution and publication really mean today and in the foreseeable future? How can independent artists exercise their rights and gain fair compensation for the use of their work?

I believe visual artists must adapt. We need to do business more efficiently by creating systems that allow us to be easily found and identified with our visual works.

ASMP has reached 1000 photographers through our symposium and copyright registration workshops and the work will continue. Our hands on workshops are training photographers on the importance of registering their photography and walking folks through the steps to actually do it. Register your work and train a friend to do the same.

Without a searchable image registry, the path forward in image licensing is not possible. ASMP supports the Picture Licensing Universal System’s development of this registry and has donated $180,000 from our Authors Coalition Funds to ensure this happens. The registry will launch this year.

Help us by creating a new marketplace thus establishing new business models that address the needs of the consumer, the artist and the publisher.

Copyright or Compensation?

[by Judy Herrmann]

ASMP’s Copyright Symposium yesterday focused on the role of Copyright in the New Economy.  I walked away from the Symposium inspired and excited by the business ideas and opportunities discussed.  But, more importantly, the Symposium renewed and reinvigorated my commitment to continue searching for ways to protect the interests of independent creators.  A search I hope you’ll join.

Copyright Law grants creators the exclusive right to exploit the fruits of their labors for a period of time.  It exists to benefit the public by providing creators with both the incentive and the financial means to create original works.  In other words, the whole point of Copyright is to enable creators to receive fair compensation so they can continue creating and the public can benefit from their creations.

But Copyright Law today falls short of accomplishing this critical goal.  To a great extent, Copyright Law as it’s applied in the United States benefits the large corporate rights-holders who daily offer creators less and less money for more and more usage far more than it does the independent creator.

For decades, many photographers have viewed Copyright Law as a sacred cow but Copyright is simply a tool; a means to an end.  That end is fair compensation – compensation that will give you both the incentive and the financial means to keep on creating. Copyright today does not accomplish this goal. We need to find other tools that will.

The video of this Symposium will be available by mid-May.  I urge you to invite some friends over and watch it from start to finish.  Use it to start your own conversation about copyright, compensation and new business models.  I hope that like me, you’ll walk away inspired, excited and committed to working with other creators to find ways that we can all keep on creating and  support our families.

ASMP Copyright Symposium Today in NYC

Copyright and the New Economy
TimesCenter, 242 West 41st St
New York, NY
Wednesday, April 21

Register Here.

Morning Session
9:30 am – Welcome — Eugene Mopsik, ASMP Executive Director
9:45 am – 10:30 am – Overview of Copyright Law — Victor Perlman, ASMP General Counsel
10:45 am – 11:30 am – Story Telling in the Digital Age — Brian Storm, President Media Storm

Afternoon Session
1:00 pm – Introductory Remarks — Richard Kelly, ASMP President
1:15 pm – 4:00 pm – Panel on Issues and Trends — Jay Kinghorn, Moderator; with Panelists Lawrence Lessig, Director, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and Professor of Law, Harvard University;  Chase Jarvis, photographer; David Carson, U.S. Copyright Office General Counsel; Jeff Sedlik, founder and CEO of the PLUS Coalition; Liz Ordoñez, photographer; and Darrell Perry, former Director of Photography, Wall Street Journal.

Copyright and The New Economy

[by Jay Kinghorn]

For many years, the profession of photography has been based on licensing a photo for a specific use, often with precise definitions on how, where and what size a given image can be reproduced. 

Today, myriad forces, including client requests, microstock and Internet publishing are prompting photographers to rethink the traditional rights-managed business model and search for creative new ways of selling their photographic services. 

Tomorrow, I’ll be moderating a panel of thought leaders on how photographers can thrive in this new environment, what new business models they think will succeed and specifically, what role should copyright play in the equation. 

We’d like you to contribute to the conversation. What questions would you ask the panelists? What new opportunities do you see for professional photography? How does copyright law need to change or adapt to facilitate and protect these new opportunities? 

Please add your thoughts and questions in the comments field below. Or, send your questions via Twitter to @asmp. I’ll incorporate your suggestions into the questions I ask panelists. In the weeks that follow, we’ll post videos of the panel discussion along with the morning presentations available at ASMP.org. 

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?

Photographers File Class Action Against Google

Philadelphia, PA…The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), joined by the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America, the North American Nature Photography Association, Professional Photographers of America, photographers Leif Skoogfors, Al Satterwhite, Morton Beebe, Ed Kashi and illustrators John Schmelzer and Simms Taback, has filed a class action copyright infringement suit against Google, Inc. in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York. The suit, which was filed by Mishcon de Reya New York LLP, relates to Google’s illegal scanning of millions of books and other publications containing copyrighted images and displaying them to the public without regard to the rights of the visual creators. ASMP and the other trade associations, representing thousands of members, decided to file the class action after the Court denied their request to join the currently pending $125 million class action that had previously been filed primarily on behalf of text authors in connection with the Google Library Project. The new class action goes beyond Google’s Library Project, and includes Google’s other systematic and pervasive infringements of the rights of photographers, illustrators and other visual artists.

This action by ASMP and its sister organizations was taken in order to protect the interests of owners of copyrights in visual works from the massive and organized copying and public display of their images without regard to their contributions and rights to fair compensation. According to ASMP Executive Director Eugene Mopsik, “Through this suit, we are fulfilling the missions of our organizations and standing up for the rights of photographers and other visual artists who have been excluded from the process up to now. We strongly believe that our members and those of other organizations, whose livelihoods are significantly and negatively impacted, deserve to have representation in this landmark issue.” ASMP General Counsel Victor Perlman said, “We are seeking justice and fair compensation for visual artists whose work appears in the twelve million books and other publications Google has illegally scanned to date. In doing so, we are giving voice to thousands of disenfranchised creators of visual artworks whose rights we hope to enforce through this class action.”

Making Copyright Part of Your Workflow

[by Jim Cavanaugh]

Photographers often cite one of the barriers to regular copyright registration is assembling the submission of images. In the old film days, it was a significant challenge to get physical copies of all your work in an acceptable form for registration.

In today’s digital world it is much easier to assemble a registration, especially if you’re taking advantage of the Copyright Office’s electronic registration or eCO. All that is required for the majority of submissions is a small j-peg copy of each image you would like to register.

Creating these j-peg images as part of your regular assignment workflow will make timely registration much easier. Most Image processing software’s common automation features can be used on large numbers of RAW files or other formats to create the smaller j-peg files.

Here is what I do. On each assignment, I create a web gallery for my clients to review using Adobe Bridge CS4. This web gallery is created from the edited raw files that have had global color and exposure corrections made. Once the gallery is created, I simply copy the j-peg files from the web gallery folder (Resourcses-Images-Large) into my copyright registration folder. At the end of each month, I register all of the images in the copyright folder.

A special note, creating the flash based web galleries in Bridge CS4 deletes all metadata from the j-peg files. I have a copyright registration metadata template with my contact and copyright information that I apply to all of the images.

I’m Gonna Sue!

[by Jim Cavanaugh]

When I was a Chapter President, I would often get calls from angry members who found that one of their photographs had been infringed. They wanted the name of a copyright attorney so they could sue the infringer. I was always stunned when I asked about what the person said after they contacted them about the infringement. In virtually every case, I got the same answer, “Oh, I didn’t contact them, they used my photograph with out permission, I’m gonna sue them!”

Well, in 35 years as a working photographer, I’ve never been in a courtroom except to photograph it. I have made it 35 years without suing anyone. And I have had countless images infringed during the same time. I simply look at situation differently.

If someone “stole” one my images,  it seems to me that they liked my image or they would not have used it. Are they a potential new client? Can a negative be turned into a positive? Filing a law suit certainly will not let that happen.

Before you run to an attorney, contact the company and let them know that you are aware that they have used one of your copyrighted photographs without the required permission and payment and that you would like to resolve the situation fairly so that they may continue to use the image. And, perhaps license more in the future.

Registration ©ounts!

[by Susan Carr]

The copyright office tells us that only 5% of photographers register their images. ASMP wants to change that and this week at Photo Plus Expo ASMP will launch a new initiative called Registration ©ounts to create awareness of copyright issues, to encourage all photographers to register their work, and to provide the tools and information needed for registration.

Representatives from the copyright office will be at the ASMP booth (#478) to answer your registration questions. ASMP now offers recommended best practices for registering your work and a workshop to help photographers get registered.

ASMP has designated the week of April 19-23, 2010 to highlight the issue of copyright and will lead a number of activities and events for photographers and other visual artists. On Wednesday, April 21st, ASMP will host a symposium entitled The Current State of Copyright from an Artist’s Perspective to explore views on significant issues, challenges and trends in copyright. Experts from leading organizations including Columbia University, PLUS and Public Knowledge will participate.

Join with ASMP to create a powerful voice for the defense of copyright law.

Registering Your Copyright – Just Do It

While registering the copyright of your photos affords photographers a variety of benefits and protections, very few of us actually do it.  What most don’t seem to realize is that once you get into the regular habit of registering, its just not that big of a deal.  Registration should be like any other part of your business –  like sending out invoices, keeping business records, and paying taxes.  I’m pretty sure that most of us take care of the latter, but for some reason we get stuck on the former.

In all of my paperwork I include in the terms and conditions that usage rights are not conveyed until the invoice is paid in full.  On various occasions I have called up accounts payable (rather than the photo editor or art director who hired me), and asked about the invoice.  If they seemed disinterested in acting on it, I would mention that all the images were registered with the Library of Congress Copyright Office.  I then politely mentioned that rights are not conveyed until payment is received, and gee, we don’t want to get into a copyright dispute about this, do we?  That usually incentivizes them to pay promptly.

On one occasion some photos of mine that were in a stock agency were transferred in error to another agency who had purchased the first.  For three years the second agency had been licensing my work without bothering to pay me the fees.  A friend tipped me off that he’d seen my photos on the second agency’s site.  When I called to investigate, agency 2 very lamely claimed they hadn’t paid me because they didn’t have my current address (I haven’t moved in 18 years).  I requested an immediate accounting of the licensing sales, which they provided. It turned out the total was several thousand dollars.  They then claimed poverty and offered to pay me in drips and drabs over the next year or two.

I pointed out that I had never agreed to the transfer of my images to agency 2, that they were licensing my photos without my permission, and that all the photos were registered images.  When they heard the photos were registered, they fedexed me a check for the full amount the next day.  “Registration” was the magic word that made it happen quickly.

ASMP has a full copyright tutorial and a NEW Best Practices Guide for registering your work.

I strongly urge anyone who is not currently registering to make use of this resource.  And don’t be overwhelmed at the thought that you have to register a mountain of work all at once.  Start by registering the work you are currently doing from today forward, and then make it a habit.  You can go back and do your legacy images as you have time.  For me, I have a folder on my desktop labeled “ready for  © office.”  I simply make a low res copy of any image I produce at the time I download it.  In a program like Lightroom, Bridge, or Aperture its easy.  All you do is export a low res copy to that folder, and when you’re ready to make a submission the files are right there.  Don’t wait, start today.