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12/09/2011 01:39:44 AM · #1 |
E-filing of copyright looks kind of exciting, the last I remember you had to send in dvd/CD by mail, but this whole process is kind of confusing to me. I think the only thing I really need to know is how to group/classify my images, but there is SO much language in the explanations and it covers so many types of work that I'm a little lost. Have any of you done this before? Which one of these do I choose? I'm leaning towards "Collection of Unpublished Works: Registration of Multiple Works As a Single Claim" but any help would be much appreciated.
You can view the site here that the excerpt was taken from.
Originally posted by eco.copyright.gov:
What Can Be Included on a Single Application?
For published works, all works published in a single unit of publication and owned by the same copyright claimant may be the subject of a single registration. For unpublished works, detailed requirements apply—see below. A single registration is not appropriate for the elements of a work when they are owned by different copyright owners. For more detailed information, see:
Collection of Published Works: Registration of Multiple Individual Works Contained in the Same Published Work.
Collection of Unpublished Works: Registration of Multiple Works As a Single Claim
Collective Works:
Single Work: Registration of a Single Work Containing Multiple Authorship Elements by Different Authors
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12/09/2011 05:33:36 AM · #2 |
It can be painful enough, organizing your archives for registration, without having to interpret the gov-speak. When I was going through this process, I called the US Copyright Office ((202) 707-3000) and found them to be very helpful and articulate.
The toughest word to get a handle on is "published". This refers to any image that has been used editorially or commercially, or offered for sale (ie, put up in a stock site like Alamy or Shutterstock or in an online gallery like Smugmug). A public display of an image does not necessarily constitute publication, unless the image(s) are being offered for sale. For example, an entry in a challenge would be considered published. An image in your portfolio would not. However, if the same portfolio image is also available at dpcPrints, then it would be considered published.
So, the first thing you have to is separate your images into two collections: published and unpublished.
The unpublished images are your low-hanging fruit. Simply group them by year, size them (720px at 72dpi), caption them (the basic IPTC info, accessible through Photoshop, Lightroom, etc), and you are good to go.
[As to size, they (the USCO) told me that they do not need the original image or even a high-res image; they just need enough for a reasonable identification of the image. If you wind up in a situation that requires their involvement, they will come to you for a copy of the original file.]
If you have "published" images, you have a little more work to do. First, you have to organize them by publisher, then by year. If you are the publisher (as would be the case if you were selling images through an online service), you are lucky because the process will be relatively easy and less expensive than if you are dealing with multiple publishers (which can be the case for freelancers).
The one thing about batch registration is that the batches must be correct. Consider this scenario: You shoot all year long, putting everything in your archives and half of your stuff for sale on SmugMug. You decide to batch register your images at the end of the year. You separate them into two groups: unpublished (the stuff that never made it to SmugMug) and published (the stuff that did make it to SmugMug). You are ready to make two separate applications. However, let's say that one of the things you shot was a high school football game and that the sports editor of the local weekly newspaper saw it online and asked your for a copy to print in the paper. Or (as is becoming more and more true), you uploaded an image to the paper's online gallery. If you include that image in either of the two registrations you have prepared, it will void the registration! That single image will require a separate registration.
The good news is that if you have multiple images published by the same entity (ie, the same local weekly), you can register up to 750 images per year in the same registration, as long as they have the same copyright information.
While it can take some time and money to go through the process, it can be fun revisiting your archives. Once it's done, it's just a matter of making registration a regular part of your workflow. At a minimum I'd recommend quarterly registrations, even those that are casual stock shooters.
Hope this helps. Good luck, and have fun!
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12/09/2011 11:22:30 AM · #3 |
Awesome, really REALLY helpful clarification Skip!
So if I had shot all year for 2011 and sent two different photos to two separate newspapers and uploaded 5 images to Alamy, I would have 4 individual registrations to create? 3 different 'published' groups containing 1, 1, and 5 images plus 1 'unpublished'?
I was thinking Quarterly too - I read somewhere that you have up to 3 months after a copyright infraction to get images registered and still have full recourse/coverage. Do you know if that information is accurate? |
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12/09/2011 12:33:16 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by fbox2:
Awesome, really REALLY helpful clarification Skip! |
you're most welcome!
Originally posted by fbox2:
So if I had shot all year for 2011 and sent two different photos to two separate newspapers and uploaded 5 images to Alamy, I would have 4 individual registrations to create? 3 different 'published' groups containing 1, 1, and 5 images plus 1 'unpublished'? |
that is correct.
Originally posted by fbox2:
I was thinking Quarterly too - I read somewhere that you have up to 3 months after a copyright infraction to get images registered and still have full recourse/coverage. Do you know if that information is accurate? |
basically, yes. i think the language is technically "90 days". however, rather than reading between the lines or challenging my memory [:0], the best thing to do is to call the USCO and walk through various scenarios. a real conversation with them will get you a lot further than what you can get off the internet.
one thing i'm considering doing to mitigate the registration cost is what i call "pre-emptive publishing". the idea is to go on and put online everything you want to register (that doesn't mean that you have to make it easy to find...), and then register everything quarterly. that way you don't have to make separate registrations for each outside publisher that utilizes one of your images. [note: this is just an idea that i haven't had a chance to run by my attorney, yet.]
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12/09/2011 12:57:52 PM · #5 |
| Sorry for the hijack.... but what happens if you have photo x registered in batch y as "unpublished"..... Then next year someone wants it and you publish it..... Does that not invalidate the prev registration batch??? |
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12/09/2011 01:15:11 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by robs:
Sorry for the hijack.... but what happens if you have photo x registered in batch y as "unpublished"..... Then next year someone wants it and you publish it..... Does that not invalidate the prev registration batch??? |
If I understand I think that's what Skip is talking about when he says 'pre-emptive publishing'. You create a blog/gallery or something and bury it on the internet but register all photos you take as 'Published' to that site. Then he doesn't have to worry later on about a previously un-registered/published photo needing to be registered by itself for $35? |
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12/09/2011 01:18:37 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by robs:
but what happens if you have photo x registered in batch y as "unpublished"..... Then next year someone wants it and you publish it..... Does that not invalidate the prev registration batch??? |
no. it's all about what happens first. in a perfect world, you would shoot, register, publish. in reality, you shoot, publish, register. that's why you have a window.
and that's why it's your responsibility...
say you shot something jan '10, but didn't register it. you found that someone had used it without your permission on sept 15 '11. you would still have a couple of days to register it and have full benefit of registration. however, if you found that it had been published without your permission on sept 15 '10, you're out of luck as far as having the full benefit.
what invalidates the batch would be to register today everything from 2010 as unpublished, then find that someone had published that image from jan '10 on sept 15 '10 without you knowing about it until after you had made your registration. my understanding is that you would have to re-register all the images in the batch, minus the one that had been published. and, as pointed out above, you would also not have the benefits of registration for that one image. |
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