Expert: Tricia Scott-Sahler - 7/9/2007

Question
I am going to submit photos to a stock agency for review.  I think I should register the copyright to these photos before I submit them to the stock agency.  I noticed that there is a difference on the copyright form between published and unpublished work.  My photos have never been published so I was planning to do a group registration of unpublished photos.  If the photos are accepted by the stock agency do I have to re-register the photos as published?

Another question- if I post my photos on a website is that considered "publishing"?

Answer
Hi Brian,

It's smart to submit your photos to the Copyright office.  Your question is one that comes up often and if you call the Copyright office two times in one day, they'll tell you something different each time!

You don't have to re-register the images once they have been registered, as long as they are registered before they are ever published. (And this can take some time) You do have to re-register them if they are altered in any way.

As stated below from the copyright.gov website, it's not clear that your images on the website are considered published: one note is that you may be safer registering them as published, as an one court case had a mistakenly registered image as published but this did not make the registration in-valid.

" In the current copyright law, “publication” is defined as “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 USC  sec. 101)."