Month: December 2016

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2017 Planning Ideas

The end of the year brings out the compulsion to make lists and I am no exception to that. It is a good time, now, in the days before the new year, to make some plans and changes to your business. Hopefully, the list below will give you some ideas of things you can do in 2017 to have a happier, more productive and lucrative, and more legally prepped (think, preventive) creative business.

  1. Register your copyrights regularly and often. If you are a photographer, register your copyrights in newly (first) published work every month; you can do this as a group published registration for one fee ($55). For all artists (not just photographers), here are some helpful links to the USCO about how you can register your works: https://www.copyright.gov/eco/help-registration-steps.html, https://www.copyright.gov/eco/help-type.html, https://www.copyright.gov/eco/eco-tutorial-standard.pdf, https://www.copyright.gov/eco/eco-tutorial-single.pdf.
    This is the cheapest insurance you can get–remember that a the minimum statutory damages for an already registered work is $750, more than the cost of your registrations.
  2. Stay aware of changes in copyright law and registration procedures. Things change and keeping up will make your life easier (like there will probably be a new way to register group unpublished photographs, soon). To stay informed, read this blog and others like my mentors (photoattorney.com) and copyrightalliance.org.
  3. If you havent yet (and dont feel bad–many of you havent), get separate business banking accounts, credit card(s), insurance, and software to track it all (like Quickbooks, Xero, etc.).
  4. Run your business like a business, including: get things in writing, including (especially!) your licenses and contracts (and invoices, etc.); have strict policies about payment schedules (like 50% up-front) and stick to them; and, pursue infringements so that you protect your rights and dont let people rip you off.
  5. If you do work for free or on a discount, from now on, do it right. First, only do it because you want to (like you get total creative freedom or its a charity you want to help). Second, invoice the client, even if the total due is $0. How? Like this:
    Creative Fee: $2000
    License Fee: $8000
    Total Fees: $10,000
    One-time Discount: -$10,000
    Total Due: $0
    This shows the value of your work and for the license; if anything goes wrong later, the invoice can be used as evidence for those values (this will make your lawyer happy; note also that the license fee is greater than the creative fee which will make your lawyer extra happy, see here for more).
  6. Plan time off. Im just as bad as most small businesspeople on this one so dont beat yourself up over it, just make it a priority this year. If you lose one project for a vacation, it is totally worth it as all the science shows you will be more creative and productive after the vacation.
  7. Work a reasonable schedule. Especially if you work from home, its vital that you have work time and not work time. Schedule a reasonable number of hours per week (like 40) and if you need to work more sometimes, then work less another. Relatedly, when you are working, you are working, so no kid interruptions or the like. If at all possible, have a separate space (room) for your work (the IRS will like you better for that, too).
  8. Pay others on time. This is just good to do, even when your clients string you on. Others behaving badly does not excuse you doing the same, so knock off that excuse. Also, in California, you must pay your crew and talent in full on the final day of any project. No exceptions (except for motion pictures, sort of). See https://burnstheattorney.com/2016/08/pay-your-people-now/
  9. Plan for the future: marriage, divorce, and death. As a creative professional, these life events have an extra impact because the copyrights you create are very seriously affected. See https://burnstheattorney.com/2016/08/i-do-what-did-i-do/ and https://burnstheattorney.com/2016/09/thinking-long/
  10. Make archival prints of your best work (at least) and back up everything connected with your business in multiple ways. This is really imprtant for many reasons. First, I think having tangible work is great. There is a big difference between opening a file on your Mac and opening a file in a drawer and finding the work there. See (from my old blog) http://www.burnsautoparts.com/blog/2014/01/09/tangible-matters/. But more importantly, if you keep your job files in print, you wont lose the contract due to some digital hiccup. Think about it–how many of you have a zip drive now? At least, do the 3-2-1 system. This guy has it right.

 

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Thank you

Every year I’m thankful for what I get to do. Usually, I express that at the holidays by buying toys for Toys for Tots, in the names of my clients. This year I was motivated to do something a bit different.

The photo above isof kits I have put together for the homeless here in San Diego. San Diego has a huge problem with homelessness, for many reasons including that it is damn expensive to live here, and many of them live in Balboa Park and nearby areas. I see these people often (my boyfriend lives near the park) and each time I’m reminded of how fortunate I am not to be one of them. I could have and, if the statistics were predictive, one could say I should have, but somehow I managed instead to not end up on the streets; in fact, I’ve done okay.

Obviously, I can’t fix things for these people. I can’t even come close. But I thought that maybe some fresh basic necessities would make a fewlives a little less difficult. So, I purchased a bunch of things like socks and soap and microfiber cloths and chapstick (and other stuff). For the women, I bought a ton of tampons, as the only thing worse than being homeless has got to be being homeless on your period. I got really big ziplock bags to hold each kit and, the otherevening, I put them together (which is a bit of a stunt with a little kitten in the house). In the next few days, with the help of my boyfriend, I’ll be handing these out.

I could have sent my clients individual gifts but, really, I think most of them have the things they need and can buy most of the things they want, andthe money will do these other people more good.

[UPDATE: We handed them out yesterday (Sunday the 18th) morning and the recipients were happily surprised and gracious. All save one (who said nothing but noddded) said things like “Thank you!” and “God bless you!” so I’m passing their thoughts on to you.]

What I want to say, though, is that I couldn’t do this if it weren’t for each one of you, my clients. Thank you for a successful first six months of this practice and for trusting me with your legal needs. I appreciate every one of you more than I can say.

May you have the happiest of holidays with whomever you love, and in 2017 may you be healthy, happy, at ease, and free from suffering.

 

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New Rules (probably)

The US Copyright Office is proposing new rules for registering photographs and it is asking for comments on these rules. There are three main categories with proposed changes: supplemental registrations, group registration of contributions to periodicals, and group registration of photographs.

The last one is likely the most important one for most photographers, so I want to talk about it, mostly, in this post. You can go here to read the official information(pdf), but I suspect most of you would rather poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick as it’s written in governmental legalese. Here’re the basics you might want to know before wading into the Federal Register.

First, all group registrations of published photos (designated GRPPH) will have to be submitted electronically (no more paper options) with digital images submitted as deposit copies. Second, the maximum number of photos permitted in a single registration will be 750. Third, photographers would have to submit a separate list of all the photos being submitted as a part of the group “with a title, file name (matching the file name of the corresponding deposit copy), and in the case of GRPPH, the month and year of publication 29 (e.g., January 2016, February 2016, etc.) for each photograph in the group.” Finally, the deposit copies must be submitted in electronic form but you can send them on a disk or flash drive or upload them (with a 500MB limit per file uploaded).

Importantly, the last significant changeis that they are proposing a new category of Group Unpublished Photographs (designated GRUPH); before one could do an “unpublished collection” but this new category would replace that and have all the same requirements as the Group Published Photographs, including the 750 photos limitation and the list (but without publication dates, of course).

The only major difference between the two groups is that for published photos, the photos have to have been published within the same calendar year but the unpublished ones are not limited by time. Besides that, the groups must be only photographs and the photographs must be created by the same photographer–no mixing like 25 photos by Photo Bob and 32 photos by Photo Betty. Both the Group Published Photographs and the Group Unpublished Photographs registrations will be $55 per registration.

As always, you still may not mix published and unpublished in a single registration. That isn’t going to change with these rules chages, although I suspect that these changes may be a step in that eventual direction (maybe).

The Copyright Office is proposing to eliminate the pilot program for the Group Published registrations and to change the application process, to streamline it more. The Unpublished and the Published processes will be very much the same. Photographers will be encouraged to list the titles (and publication dates for published works) on the application itself as that will put them on the Certificate and that gives you advantages legally (I’m not going into that here, though–just do it) but, at a minimum, you’ll have to submit the list with all that information with the deposit copies (still, take the time to list the titles, it will be worth it).

Most importantly, the proposed rule would clarify that the single registration of a group confers full protection for each individual photograph in the group. That would eliminate the arguments that defendants use to try and limit the damages (or argue fair use) we see in court sometimes, like that using one image out of a registration of 500 items is de minimis since it’s only 1/500th of the whole. This is a very good thing.

To submit comments on these new proposed rules, first read the details in the pdf linked to above, then you can comment by going here. Note that comments are due by January 3, 2017.

The Supplementary Registration is used to correct errors or make changes to an existing registration. Hopefully, you’ll never need to file one, but if you do you’re very likely going to have to do it electronically in the future. For more information on the proposed changes or to make comments, go here.

If you make contributions to periodicals, you may use that form of registration (GRCP) and there are changes there as well. Mostly, it is about making the registrations electronic, much like the Group Photo options I described above (are you seeing a theme here?). Notably, the Copyright Office notes in the Group Registrations proposed changes that it encourages photographers to use those options instead of the GRCP as there are fewer limitations. Still, if you use this form of registration (and this applies to text as well as photos, by the way), you should go here to read about the changes and to submit comments.

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