176 Copyright, Trademarks, and Model Releases
the photograph has a moral right not to have copies issued to the public. Check
your contracts!To be protected by copyright, the work should be “original,” but
in English law, this is an easy test to pass. It is the expression of
a creative idea that is protected, not the idea for the photograph
itself. Some work, labor, or skill should be employed. US law is
similar to English law but not identical, looking more toward a
creativity test.Registration
Although you don’t have to register your work to own the copyright
for it, it is often possible to register, and registration confers benefi ts
in the the United States and elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, there
are voluntary registration services designed simply to provide evidence
of your ownership of copyright. At the very least, registration makes
it easier to establish your rights should there be a later infringement.
Recent proposed changes in US law that would make it easy for
orphaned works—those for which the owner of the copyright in the
work cannot be traced—to be used without infringing on copyright
could make registration almost mandatory. The proposal is a disaster
waiting to happen for photographers in its present form. The problem
is that most photographs do not identify the creator, and if they do,
the attribution is easily stripped out.
Fortunately, images you submit to microstock libraries will only
be sold by them with a proper copyright warning, and you will
(unless you decide otherwise) retain copyright of your photographs.
The library’s contract with the buyer will contain a long list of
terms and conditions and should make it crystal clear that however
broad the rights being sold may appear to be, there are limits,
and transfer of copyright is one of them (unless you agree otherwise,
of course).
There is another problem, though, with the microstocks and
copyright, and it has little to do with your copyright in the
photographs.Infringing Others’ Rights
Immediately you will appreciate an obvious problem for the micro-
stock sites—they accept submissions from just about anywhere in the
world, and they therefore have to impose standard rules of general
applicability, based on a “lowest common denominator” approach.
This means they don’t take any unnecessary chances! If any image
you submit to a microstock library infringes third-party copyright, then