Do You Register Your Images For Copyright? Big Changes Coming In Three Weeks! These Changes Are NOT Good!

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If you regularly register your photographic images with the United States Copyright Office, this will be of great interest to you.  Currently, one can register an unlimited number of image files at once with one $55 US fee.  As of February 20, 2018, you will no longer have that option.  As of that date, you will only be able to register 750 images for that fee.  For additional images, you will have to go through the registration process and submit an additional $55 US for each 750 images you wish to register.

For those of you who register all of your photographs throughout the year, this will increase your costs exponentially.  Not good for us photographers.

Here is the notification information directly from the U.S. Copyright Office website.

"GROUP REGISTRATION OF PHOTOGRAPHS"

"After soliciting comments in late 2016, the U.S. Copyright Office adopted a final rule, effective February 20, 2018, governing group registration of photographs. The final rule modifies the procedure for registering groups of published photographs (GRPPH), and establishes a similar procedure for registering groups of unpublished photographs (GRUPH). The final rule adopts a new requirement that applicants seeking copyright registrations for groups of photographs—both published and unpublished—must generally submit applications through the Office’s electronic registration system, and can include up to 750 photographs in each claim. The final rule also modifies the deposit requirement by requiring applicants to submit their contributions in a digital format and to upload those files through the electronic system; clarifies the eligibility requirements; and confirms that a group registration issued under GRPHH or GRUPH covers each photograph in the group, each photograph is registered as a separate work, and the group as a whole is not considered a compilation or a collective work."

Here is the actual summary from the U.S. Copyright Office quoting the new rule.  At the end of the summary is a link if you would like to read the entire multi-page document.

"LIBRARY OF CONGRESS U.S. Copyright Office 37 CFR Parts 201, 202 [Docket No. 2016–10]"

"Group Registration of Photographs"

"AGENCY: U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress."

"ACTION: Final rule. SUMMARY: The U.S. Copyright Office is modernizing its practices to increase the efficiency of the group registration option for photographs. This final rule modifies the procedure for registering groups of published photographs (GRPPH), and establishes a similar procedure for registering groups of unpublished photographs (GRUPH). Applicants will be required to use a new online application specifically designed for each option, instead of using a paper application, and will be allowed to include up to 750 photographs in each claim. The ‘‘unpublished collection’’ option (which allows an unlimited number of photographs to be registered with one application), and the ‘‘pilot program’’ (which allows an unlimited number of published photographs to be registered with the application designed for one work) will be eliminated. The corresponding ‘‘pilot program’’ for photographic databases will remain in effect for the time being. The final rule modernizes the deposit requirements by requiring applicants to submit their photographs in a digital format when using GRPPH, GRUPH, or the pilot program for photographic databases, along with a separate document containing a list of the titles and file names for each photograph. The final rule revises the eligibility requirements for GRPPH and GRUPH by providing that all the photographs must be created by the same ‘‘author’’ (a term that includes an employer or other person for whom a work is made for hire), and clarifying that they do not need to be created by the same photographer or published within the same country. It also confirms that a group registration issued under GRPHH or GRUPH covers each photograph in the group, each photograph is registered as a separate work, and the group as a whole is not considered a compilation or a collective work.

DATES: Effective February 20, 2018. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Robert J. Kasunic, Associate Register of Copyrights and Director of Registration Policy and Practice; Sarang Vijay Damle, General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights; Erik Bertin, Deputy Director of Registration Policy and Practice by telephone at 202–707–8040 or by email at rkas@loc.gov, sdam@ loc.gov, and ebertin@loc.gov."

If you want to read the full text of the new rule, which is several pages long, you can find it here.

The only good news to come out of this new rule is that when you "group" register your images, each image will be covered individually for liability.  What this means is that if someone illegally uses, for example, 50 of your images, a court can award a maximum of 50 X $150,000.

How will this affect me?  

I will no longer bulk register my images as I register several thousand each year.  Also, I will no long submit photographs to my stock agency.  

Why?  

I register all of my images each year.  Each year, I take about 12-13,000 photographs.  I can't possibly afford to register them all.  

What about just registering the ones you plan to send to the stock agency?  

That can partially work.  The problem is that I regularly go back through my images and find ones that I now like that I may not have liked so much before.  If I were to submit those to the stock agency, I would have to register each one.  Each of these images could be different years, etc., which doesn't work when registering your images.  Each year's created images are registered separately.  Additionally, sometimes I am contacted by someone who sees one of my images and wants to license its use or someone hires me to create images for them.  In that case, those images would have to be registered separately.  

The last question I have is why?  Why make things more difficult, more expensive and purposefully negatively impact enthusiast as well as small business photographers?  It takes no more time nor expense processing 5000 images as it does 1.  

The upshot is that, in my case, the expense is now prohibitive and I have to change the way I conduct my image management.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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