Copyright In The New Millennium

Photographers Seth Resnick, Jack Reznicki and Jeff Schewe led a spirited discussion on copyright at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology on March 22. About 300 people turned up for the event, organized by Canon as part of its "Explorers of Light" lecture series. Resnick, Reznicki and Schewe are all Canon Explorers, a group that includes more than 60 photographers.

The three took turns to speak about copyright: Reznicki covered the history of copyright, Resnick spoke about copyright protection on the Web, and, with Schewe, demonstrated how images can be registered with the copyright office in batches to save on copyright fees. In his presentation, Resnick stressed how easy it was to copyright all pictures before publication. Mass registration of images still accords protection to individual photographs in the collection, says Resnick. He also urged photographers to visit Web sites such as www.loc.gov/copyright/ to download forms and to get more information.

Photographers were reminded that the old saying "When it's created, it's copyrighted" did not offer much protection against infringement and filing copyright registration was the only way to win statutory damages and legal fees if a court finds there is an infringement. Check out PDN's extensive guide to copyright issues at www.pdn-pix.com/businessresources/copyright.html

Photographers Arnold Newman, Chris Rainer, Joyce Tenneson, Stephen Wilkes and Jay Maisel were spotted among the audience. At one point, Seth Resnick asked the participants to raise their hands if they copyrighted all their material. Only one or two hands shot up. Resnick then asked Jay Maisel about his practice of copyright. Maisel responded that it was a "physical impossibility" to copyright everything, although he did try to copyright his published photographs.

During the question and answer session, several photographers brought up their own cases of copyright infringement, including Don Carroll from stock agency Concept Images. One of the agency's images had been copied and used in wireless ads in China. If it were not for an art director who emailed him from China, Carroll would not have known about the copyright infringement. He was looking for advice on what to do because the incident was in China. He had not sued or found a lawyer yet. Canon's Michael Newler ended the night by suggesting Canon would look into organizing more copyright talks in the future.