“If you are not registering your work with the Copyright Office, you are not respecting your work either. Registering your copyrights is the professional thing to do.”
This important observation comes from Susan Carr in her great ADBASE “Insight” article, “Protect & Respect: Why It’s important to Register Images.” Carr not only goes over the Whys, but leads us to practical Hows.
As Carr, a photographer dedicated to photographer rights, a past president of the Amiercan Society of Media Photographers and a regular contributor to ASMP’s “Strictly Business Blog,” explains:
“When I first started registering my photographs with the Copyright Office, I cherry picked images or projects based on my own assessment of their value.
“It turns out that I am not the best judge of what the market will like or use. For example, I photographed a project 10 years ago for an architect. The license clearly states no third-party use. Fast-forward: I recently discovered these same images on various sub-contractors’ websites.”
Carr goes on to explain that:
“Without registering the work prior to the infringement, I simply do not have the big stick to bring to the table.”
The Reality
As Carr points out, there are some many factors working against photographers when in comes to copyright infringement in the digital era, especially:
• The ease with which people can copy and use our images.
• The impending change to copyright law know as “Orphan Works Legislation.”
• The stripping of critical copyright and ownership metadata by many popular social media sites, such as FaceBook.
The Good News — Taking Action
The good news is that the Copyright Office has made it easier than ever before to automate copyright registration as part of every photographer’s workflow. To get up to speed on this, check out:
• The free, two-hour “Registration Counts” workshop offered to by the ASMP to member and nonmembers alike, upcoming in cities nationwide.
• Online you can refer to ASMP’s very clear and comprehensive “Copyright Tutorial: Best Practices for Registering Your Photographs.” (Very, very well done.)
• The ASMP copyright registration podcast version of the above info.
Be Prepared To Be Stripped
Regarding how to deal with metadata stripping (which many photographers are not aware of) Carr shares:
“For uses like Facebook, consider adding a credit line on the image so that your name and copyright notice are intact and visible. And, be aware of the terms of service on social media sites. An analysis of these terms is available at http://www.asmp.org/socialmediaterms.”
Action, Not Fear
Susan Carr’s insights on copyright protection are refreshing because she avoids motivation through fear tactics (never very helpful), but keeps us thinking positively and professionally. She ends her great article with this note:
“Photographers own the copyrights to their work at the moment of creation, as soon as the original idea is fixed in a tangible form. But if you are a professional, your work does not end here. You should register your work with the Copyright Office, embed contact and copyright information into every file and, wherever possible, seek attribution adjacent to your images.
“Treat your work with the professional respect you want to be given.”