• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4134 0

sheet in such a manner that for each photograph in the group, it is possible to ascertain the date of its publication. However, the Office will not catalog individual dates of publication; the Copyright Office catalog will include the single publication date or range of publication dates indicated on the Form VA. If the claimant uses a continuation sheet to provide details such as date of publication for each photograph, the certificate of registration will incorporate the continuation sheet, and copies of the certificate may be obtained from the Copyright Office and reviewed in the Office's Card Catalog room.

Sign and Date

Again, the field in Figure 17.23 is pretty obvious, but it's a field you can't forget to overlook! Make sure to sign and date the form!

Figure 17.23

Archival

We have a system for how we archive our registrations. Each registration submission form is filed in its own file folder, along with a duplicate of the CD that was submitted to the Copyright Office. When we receive the final certificate, that original document is filed in the file folder, and they are stored safely. If you are someone who has a fair amount of spare time, scanning and converting both sides of the document into a PDF might serve you well in the future. Further, there is a significant fee to have another original registration form produced from the Copyright Office, so treat these as valuable as a birth certificate. In a way, that's one of the things it stipulates—who the images belong to and when they were created.

Definitions: Published versus Unpublished—the Debate

Language on the Copyright Office website, derived from the copyright regulations, defines publication as such:

"Publication'' is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication. 17 U.S.C. 101.

This means that displaying your work in a gallery is probably not publication. My position, and one which my attorney has stated he is comfortable defending, is this:

I undertake assignments for which I am paid. There is a part of the contract that requires the client to pay, and there is also a part of the contract that grants rights to the client that allow them to further distribute the work to their clients, subscribers, viewers, or the like. We offer to our clients all images produced under the assignment, and their purpose is to further distribute that work or display it publicly, and thus, it meets the requirement for publication. As such, at the conclusion of each month, we begin the process of burning a CD of all the images we produced on assignment for clients, stipulating the dates as the first date of the first assignment and the last date of the last assignment—since we offer to clients the opportunity to have the images delivered to them same day, and they dictate when they would like to receive them.

My recommendation is that you establish a relationship with a good copyright attorney and solicit from him or her guidelines for your specific circumstances that the attorney is comfortable defending on your behalf.

If, despite all your best efforts to determine the answer during the course of your registration, you still are not sure whether to register your images as published or unpublished, you should register as published. The reason for this is that the Copyright Office will allow you to amend your copyright registration from published to unpublished; however, you cannot amend from unpublished to published. Be sure to consult an attorney to reaffirm this for you.

As to "group of persons," there is little significant case law that I am aware of that properly defines this term. That group could be two or three photo editors or a photo editor and another designer, or it could be the entirety of the