“Make registration part of your workflow” is probably the most fundamental and important message we at RightsClick have for independent creators. This is especially true for the highest-volume creators – photographers. The most common questions we receive revolve around when in the workflow registration should occur. This is both a practical question about efficiency and a question about copyright protection of different versions of a photograph.
Although decisions vary depending on genre, the first version of a photograph edited for faithful reproduction is the version many photographers choose register with the Copyright Office. The most efficient and cost-effective group registration is one comprising 750 images totaling no more than 500mb as a group. 750 images are the maximum allowed on a single application, and the Copyright Office has a maximum .zip file size of 500mb per folder. It is allowable to separate the images into more than one folder, but we urge photographers to try to keep this to 1 or 2 folders to minimize potential errors. If you’re using RightsClick, we take care of folder management for you.
With those parameters, RAW and other large files are impractical. In fact, group photo applications may only include either JPEG, GIF, or TIFF files (we recommend JPEG), and a single group may only include one file type. So, after a shoot, and after you weed out images you are unlikely to deliver to clients or ever use, a batch of edited JPEGs (3mb or less each) is generally ready for registration.
Publication Status
A group of photographs submitted for registration must either be all published or all unpublished. The RightsClick app prevents mixing the two. For many photographers, submitting a copyright application before the photos leave the studio has the advantage that the images are still unpublished. This is more convenient because there is no need to identify the month of publication (as there is for published photos) and because published groups are required to have been published in the same year.
Certain photographers, for example real estate photographers, commonly send photos to clients within hours of editing, and this kind of client delivery can be considered publication. To get the maximum amount of photographs on a single application, it is permissible to group jobs together, as long as they were all published in the same year, and it is advisable to submit registrations within 3 months of first publication in order to have full protection and remedies under the Copyright Act.
Protecting New Versions
This does not come up very often with photographs, but we did write a blog answering some common questions about registering new versions of works that were previously registered. In the eyes of the law, changes to a work creates a “derivative work” IF the changes are enough to be new copyrightable expression in the work. Thus, subtle reediting of a photograph (e.g., because it will be printed or displayed in a certain way) does not necessarily produce new copyrightable expression. By contrast, dramatic changes to a photo that truly alter how it is expressing the subject can produce a work that is worth registering anew. This is a judgment call for you as a creator, or for an attorney if need be, but you should avoid registering what is reasonably the same photograph more than once.
We hope this helps you make copyright protection a regular part of your workflow. RightsClick makes the application process quick and easy, freeing you to spend more time creating or with friends and family or maybe catching up on a good book!
