“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:
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