Registering Us Copyrights with a low-cost budget. Specific questions, Number 3 and 6 the most important
in Discussion Forum February 18, 2016, 13:51


Hello, I've been reading quite a lot of websites, FAQs, blog posts and whatever on the subject lately, but I still have some doubts.

I've never registered my photos before, I'm Italian, and I never thought I might have an advantage on doing it.

I run a travel websites where 99% of the photos are mine, and get copied to hundreds of websites around the world (Mostly Asia and East Europe). Not many to US, but some yes. Last year I managed to get paid some money by 4-5 infringers, one of them from Usa. So I though it would be worth to try registering my photos.

I'm on a very low budget, so I would like to understand what would be the most cost-efficient way for me to do it. The best of the best would be to register them all in one single collection. So I ask to please don't answer according to "The best would be...". I already know that the best would be to register my photos with a cycle of maximum 3 months before they are published, and wathever else. What I would like to know is the cheapest way (not the best) to register most if not all of my photos, taken in the last 5 years.

Premise: I consider all of my photos uploded to my website or facebook, to be published, even if not for sale.

Below some questions and thoughts.

1) In theory you can't register published and unpublished work togheter. What if I renounce to past infringments, is there a chance to legally register all of my photos as Published in 2016? In example can a photo that was publishe din 2012 be registered as published in 2016 if I renounce to past years infringements?

(This would involve to publish all of my archive of my currently unpublished photos online before filing the request of course)

2) Is it possible to publish unpublished photos as published?

Online information were controversial. The website of an attorney specialized in Copyrights, stated that it was possible to register unpublished photos as published. But another source stated that if even one photo of a collection is found to be declared uncorrectly (published or unpublished) then your registration might be refused or during a lawsuit you might have problems, or you might need to rectify the mistake with a 100$ fine with Form CA if you fnd it out by yourself. (I could skip this problem by publishing all of my archive of my currently unpublished photos online before the request of course)

3) I read that Statuory damages are just one time per collection. What does exactly this mean? In example an infringer, John, is using 5 of my photos from the same collection "Landscapes" in 2013, I can recover only one statuory damage, not 5. In 2014 another infringer, Mark, is infringing 10 of my photos from the same collection "Landscapes". Can I ask him statuory damages since he is a different person, or not because it's the same collection and I already was paid once statuory damages on that collection? Then John, the first infringer, in 2016 uses different 20 photos form the same collection "Landscapes". Can he now use freely all the images he wants from the collection "Landscapes" since he has already paid me once in 2013, and I cannot sue him anymore for the same collection, or does it count as a new infringement and I can recover statuory damages once more, even if it's the same person infringing and the same collection?

4) When doing the registration for a Published or Unpublished collection, can I register photos from different years? My supposition is No, since I have to state the "Date of Creation" but I just would like confirmation.

5) What date counts for a collection? My supposition is that for published images I have to group the photos according to the date of publication and for Unpublished images I can group my images according to the year they were taken. Is this right?

6) Is this correct: for published images there is a limit of 750 images per collection because of the "continuation form", while there is no limit for unpublished images (limit is one hour upload time)? This is quite important, because if I misunderstood the limits and also for published collection I can register an unlimited number of photos, then I could register all of my unpublished photos taken in any year, all togheter paying just one collection fee (instead of one fee per year), after having published a small but recognizable preview of them in my website.

Thank you for the help, Davide



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