You may register photographs in groups of up to 750 images in a single application. That’s the good news. The Copyright Office also asks photographers to submit spreadsheets listing the Titles (names). With the RightsClick suite, you can submit a group photo application in a matter of minutes. And we take care of those spreadsheets!
Registration Rules
- UNPUBLISHED group applications may include photos created at any time.
- PUBLISHED photos submitted as a group application must have been first published in the same calendar year.
- NO MIXING published and unpublished on the same application (RightsClick automatically prevents this).
File Size & Types
We recommend file sizes of 3mb or less per image and that no single Project be larger than 4GB. Larger projects may result in delays, and HUGE projects may fail to process. Additionally, groups of photos are broken down into 500mb folders to comply with Copyright Office rules. RightsClick facilitates this step as needed, but we urge minimizing the number folders to reduce potential errors. Group photographs must be either JPEG, TIFF, or GIF, and all photos in a group must be the same file type. We strongly recommend JPEGs.
NOTE: It is important that all the elements of a visual work are visible in the deposit copy submitted for registration. For this reason, some more detailed images may require large file sizes, but we urge you not to submit large files for all images.
Naming Your Titles
Each individual image is referred to in RightsClick and by the Copyright Office as a Title. We urge everyone to use short, simple names. Fewer than 20 characters is great. Fewer than 50 characters is a good idea. Anything approaching 60 or more characters is likely chaos, but you do what you gotta do. A nice, clean format is Edison_May2022_001. There are a few hard rules about names, and these are:
- Latin characters and numbers only.
- No punctuation other than underscores. Ampersands are death!
- Each Title in a group must have its own name. No extra credit for cleverness; that’s up to you.
You will want to name your Titles before uploading them into a RightsClick Project.
RightsClick Projects
Titles in RightsClick are uploaded into Projects. The name you give a Project will be the name used for the group registration (e.g., Edison Collection 2002). We recommend that no single Project be larger than 750 images since this is the maximum amount allowed on a single application. You can create larger projects, but that way madness lies.
Fees
The Copyright Office charges $55 for a group photo registration, and RightsClick charges $15 for a small group (<100 images) and $30 for a large group. Did we mention the spreadsheets and the annoying math we take care of for you?
Are you a member of one of these photo organizations? Click the logo to check your Members page for further discounts and offers from RightsClick.
Yes, you may email us your copyright question, and we’ll do our best to answer, but RightsClick is not your attorney, and it does not provide legal advice.