The Copyright Registry has announced that members in good standing of the American Society of Media Photographers are now eligible for free services. The Registry, which beta-launched in 2008 in anticipation of the passage of an orphan-works legislation in the U.S., offers a set of free services; however, registering as a creator carries annual fees, as do several other services.
At its core, the Copyright Registry exists to help creators claim, track and defend their copyright, while helping publishers find copyright owners of creative works. In addition to spidering the Web to find instances of use and facilitating communication between publishers and content owners, the Registry assists with legally important paperwork: it helps users issue Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notices and create verifiable reports of ownership. The company Web site explains: “For example, a verifiable C-Report from C-Registry.us can state who is the claimed copyright holder or that a content is unclaimed (what some might call an ‘orphaned work’) at that moment in time.”
The Copyright Registry advises creators to authenticate themselves for a $30 annual fee—a service that is currently extended to ASMP members free of charge. Authenticated creators can lock their records, claimeing copyright ownership to a work, which nobody else can change. Unlocked records—which include the claim of copyright ownership, the authorship and title of the work, an ecommerce link to license the content in question, and the official U.S. Copyright Registration number that links to the Copyright.gov record—can be changed at anytime by any Registry user.
While ASMP members can become authenticated free of charge, the Registry’s reporting functions, such as documenting current ownership of a given work or issuing a DMCA take-down notice, will carry additional fees.