It is important to copyright your images to protect your work. This is especially important when you put your images up on the Internet for anyone to access 24/7. In addition to registering your copyright with the United States Copyright Office, there are many ways you can stop or deter people from downloading your images off your web site.

The first and most important thing you want to do is to register your images with the United States Copyright Office. Even though, your images are copyrighted as soon as your create them, you will have no legal case against image thieves unless your images are registered, so the United States Copyright Office has evidence.

It is inexpensive to register your copyright and you can register a whole batch of images at one time for one small fee of $30. A batch of images can be registered as a collection using Form VA.

There are 3 things you must send the United States Copyright Office when registering:

1. Form VA correctly and completely filled out.

2. The $30, non-refundable application fee.

3. A non-returnable deposit of the images you want to register.

You maybe wondering about #3. What suffices as a deposit?

You can put all of your images you want to copyright on a disc in low res format, like a cd-rom or dvd-rom or you could send a contact sheet of your images. You can also put your slides in sleeves, put them on a light box and take pictures of them with negative film and send that. Don't use the USPS to send in your registration materials. They are slow to do so due to security reasons.

You should also put a copyright notice on all your images and anything that has one or more of your images on it. This is to inform everyone that your image(s) is copyrighted and may not be used without permission from you. A copyright notice looks like this:

© 2005 Rick Baker Images

or

Copyright 2005 Rick Baker Images

with the copyright symbol or just "Copyright", the date it was created and your name or company name.