As most photographers do, they submit their photographs to the U.S. Copyright Office. During my most recent submittal, Kathryn, the Registration Specialist with the U.S. Copyright office was kind enough to communicate to me the proposed changes for artists submitting published works. I thought it was interesting and very useful so I wanted to share this information with you. The below text is quoted from her email to me.
The first submission is limited to no more than 250 photographs. Remember for published photographs you can only submit photographs that were published in the same calendar year.
TYPE OF WORK: select Work of the Visual Arts.
TITLE: Title of work being registered should be the collective title for the group – such as “Davis Hawaii Photo 2011.” If the photos are published the alternative title (ALT space) must begin with “Group Registration Photos”, then range of publication dates must be included, as well as how many photographs are in the group. The dates of publication must be complete dates – day, month, and year. EXAMPLE: Group Registration Photos, , published Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2009; 250 photos. Unpublished groups just need the group or collection title.
CONTENTS TITLES: After you have saved the main title you must enter the contents titles. Click New, then select Contents titles for title type, then add the titles of the photographs. Published photos must include the complete date of publication after each title. It is probably best for a larger group to enter the titles in a string. Separate these titles with a semicolon space. EXAMPLE: Diamond Head, Feb. 14, 2009; Pear Harbor Mar. 2, 2009; etc. For each Contents titles box or line enter no more than 1900 characters (spaces are counted as characters). The system will let you add more than that, but not all titles will show up in the cataloging record and for the pilot we want all titles in the catalog record. You can have multiple boxes/lines of contents titles.
Note: you may want to enter the titles in a word document or similar program that can tell you how many characters you have so you can try to cut and paste.
You can also enter each contents title on a separate line.
PUBLICATION: For published works, enter the earliest date of publication. The date must be complete: day, month, and year. Give the country the photographs were first published in, in the appropriate box. Give the year of completion in the appropriate box.
For unpublished photo collections you will only give the year of completion. The year of completion is for the collection which is the year the last work was completed in.
AUTHOR. All photos must be taken by the same photographer.
Select “Photograph(s)” for Author Created.
CLAIMANT: the claimant must the same for all the photographs.
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS: optional.
CORRESPONDENT: required.
MAIL CERTIFICATE: required.
SPECIAL HANDLING: not for the pilot program.
CERTIFICATION: required.
REVIEW
DO NOT HIT SUBMIT. Save the information and E-mail me the Service Request number so I can look at it and let you know if changes need to be made before you submit.
DEPOSIT REQUIREMENTS: Be sure the files you wish to upload are on the list of acceptable files. As stated above the first submission is limited to no more than 250 photographs. We are requiring that you include a titles list as the first upload. For published photographs the list must include the complete date of publication for the titles.
For some additional information on copyrights and the law, check out Ken Kaminesky’s Copyright Posts.
