Copyright 21st Century Style

Our workflow, like most of you I hope, intrinsically features images for copyright submission at the US Copyright Office within Library of Congress. This is a simple process that the government has put at our disposal for protection of unique works. I view this as a two fold dealing: ONE, as a great step for creators of media or art (musicians, writers, performers, etc) to protect our livelihood. Secondly, it's a great offering for our clients as it protects their interests and is a definite step we can offer in our in house processing.

The Copyright Office, along with various photography groups such as ASMP, has been working on electronic registration for some time. Recently, I was selected as a beta tester for this system and am now in the process of putting it through the paces. I'll keep you informed as to how it works but in the meantime don't hesitate to chime in with ideas. With electronic registration possible soon there's absolutely no excuse not to have this step in your workflow. In our workflow within Lightroom it's a single button click via our presets that my assistant initates.

Also received an email update from the Copyright Alliance. The CA is a non-profit that promotes copyright protection and growth across fields. They've put together a comprehensive site with materials and articles covering FAQ's, intellectual property rights, orphan works, industry practices and more.

For more information in general on copyright issues or how to register your work try the US Copyright Office via the Visual Arts link or find tutorials like this ASMP one. I'll touch on my specific workflow in another post but definitely get your lo-rez jpgs copyright bound.