Business and Legal Forms for Photographers, 4th Edition

Tad Crawfordis an attorney, publisher, artist's rights advocate, and author ofStarting Your Career as a Freelance PhotographerandLegal Guide for the Visual Artistas well as books of business and legal forms for fine artists, authors and self-publishers, graphic designers, interior designers, and crafters. Crawford founded Allworth Press in 1989 with the mission of creating business and educational books for creative professionals. Today Allworth Press has a backlist of more more >>

Tad Crawfordis an attorney, publisher, artist's rights advocate, and author ofStarting Your Career as a Freelance PhotographerandLegal Guide for the Visual Artistas well as books of business and legal forms for fine artists, authors and self-publishers, graphic designers, interior designers, and crafters. Crawford founded Allworth Press in 1989 with the mission of creating business and educational books for creative professionals. Today Allworth Press has a backlist of more than 300 books, publishes 12-15 books annually, and employs a staff of six very talented people. The first edition ofBusiness and Legal Forms for Photographerswas published in 1991.An excerpt from the newly released Fourth Edition ofBusiness and Legal Forms for PhotographersbyTad Crawford(Allworth Press)

Registering Your Copyright

The Copyright Office has built an excellent online presence at www.copyright.gov. Their Web site has extensive information about copyright, including numerous publications, forms, the federal copyright law, copyright regulations, legislative proposals, reports, and more. The photographer should be able to find the answers to most questions about copyright, including how register copyrights.
Registration has always required a correctly filled in application form, the specified fee, and deposit materials that show the content of what is being copyrighted. The registration process has been streamlined and the Copyright Office now prefers to have registration completed electronically on their Web site by what is called the eCO Online System (eCO abbreviates electronic Copyright Office). To encourage photographers and other authors to do this, the fee for online registration is now less than the fee for registration using paper forms. The use of paper forms is expensive for the Copyright Office. To discourage their use for registration, the Copyright Office does not make the paper application forms available off their Web site anymore. To obtain the paper forms a special request must be made to the Copyright Office (the request can be on the Web site).
Among the advantages of eCO online registration are a lower basic registration fee (currently $35), the quickest time to complete the registration, status tracking online, secure online payment, the ability to upload certain deposits materials as electronic files, and 24/7 availability. Anyone can use eCO and most types of works are eligible for eCO (but note that groups of contributions to periodicals cannot use eCO). Currently eCO will accept registrations for (1) a single work; (2) a group of unpublished works by the same author and owned by the same copyright claimant; or (3) multiple works contained in the same unit of publication and owned by the same claimant (such as a book of photographs). The eCO registration process requires filling in the online application form, making payment, and submitting deposit copies.
The deposit copies for eCO can be electronic in a number of situations, including if the work being registered is unpublished, has only been published electronically, or is a published work for which identifying material would be used instead of the work itself. Identifying material for a work of visual art might be used if the work is three dimensional or oversized (more than 96 inches in any dimension). The deposit requirements, including the use of identifying material, are set forth in Circular 40A,Deposit Requirements for Registration of Claims to Copyright in Visual Arts Material. ITAL If a work is eligible for eCO registration but the deposit cannot be electronic, a hard copy can be used and sent to the Copyright Office. General guidelines to registration can be found in Circular 40,Copyright Registration for Works of the Visual Arts.
If eCO registration cannot be used, the next best alternative would be filling in Form CO on the Copyright Office Web site. Form VA is o << less