Category: value

Posted on

Time Again

The issue of time, especially in regards to copyright registrations and infringements and how much you might get for an infringement, comes up, well, time and again. It’s been a minute since I mentioned it here; I thought it was time to change that.

(Sorry for all the time references, there…
okay, not sorry.)

Generally speaking, you should register your work as soon as possible after its creation. If possible, registering it before it goes out into the world is your best bet, but I mean before it goes out into the world, because you might actually screw up the registration otherwise.

How? Publication has a really awful legal definition as you can see here. Normal human thoughts of what publication means may not be accurate! One big example is when you provide work to a client, whether they actually use the work or not, that work is published on the date you provided it to the client. So, you can see what I mean above about “before.”

Anyway, a registration that is made before a work’s first publication will make available the enhanced remedies (those are statutory damages and possibly attorney’s fees) for any infringement of that work–all the infringements will be after the effective date of the registration. Enhanced remedies are often the key in getting someone like me to take your case on a contingency fee (that is where we get a percentage of what you get, when you get it). Enhanced remedies will often be the difference between getting something like $500 and getting thousands. So, registration as unpublished, before letting the work out into the world, particularly when there is a group registration option like for photographs, makes that easy and cheap.

Of course, however, we are busy folk and can’t always take the time to file an application for registration right after we’ve created some work. Usually, in fact, you’re going to have to file after the work is first published (remember, published in the legal sense, not the human sense). Don’t fret! The law gives you an option to make it as if you registered the work on the day is way first published: the three-month window.

Pay attention, because people screw this up all the time. The three-month window is a part of copyright law that says that any registration made within three calendar months after the first publication of a work will invoke a bit of legal magic: it is as if you registered the work on the day of its first publication. This makes enhanced remedies available for virtually any infringement because, again, any infringement will happen after that date of first publication.

So, if you register everything you first published from January 1 through March 31 on March 31, you’re golden (same for Apr 1-Jun 30 on June 30; Jul 1 -Sep 30 on Sept 30; and Oct 1-Dec 31 on Dec 31). In the case of photographs, 4 group published photographs registrations will protect all your published work for the year. This calendar, by the way, is the most efficient because you can only register group published photos that were first published in the same calendar year–so you can’t do, for example, November 1, 2026 – January 31, 2027.

Finally, if you don’t register before publication or within the three-month window, all is not lost. Don’t forget that any infringement that starts after a work’s registration, no matter when the work was registered vis-a-vis its first publication date, has enhanced remedies available. Made something and first published it in 2010? Register it today (May 11, 2026) and any infringement that actually starts (not when you find it but when the infringer started using it) May 12, 2026 or later gets the enhanced remedies. Yay!

While most of my readers are photographers, some of you make other creative works. Group registrations are becoming more and more available for non-photo works, like 2D published works; unpublished non-photo works; as well as ones for music, etc. (photographers really had it lucky, early). Take advantage of these newer forms, create your schedule, and start protecting your work via timely registrations!

And if you need help with any of this, or chasing down the infringers, you can always find me here.

Posted on

“Oh Shit, I’m Slow”

I am hearing the above from lots of creative pros. Work is sloooow for many of you. Clients just are not hiring. Hopefully, hearing this truth will help you to feel emotionally a little better. That is, you can know it very likely is not you, it’s just the way things are.

The political situation is putting financial pressure on all sorts of businesses (and individuals) and, arguably stupidly1, when a business gets slow the first thing cut is often the marketing budget. Less money for marketing means less money to hire freelance creatives to produce material. Older work gets reused. Everyone holds their breath.

Most creative pros think they have one revenue stream: new sales (that is, new projects). Maybe one-and-a-half: new sales and re-licensing of existing work. That’s it. So, when your clients slow down and don’t have as many projects to offer, you slow down and you make less money. All your eggs are in that basket.

However, if that describes your business, you are almost certainly missing another revenue stream: getting paid for infringements of your copyrights.

Okay, some people consider it crass or at least tacky to call pursuing infringers for payment a revenue stream. They need to get over it. Actually, I think that most of these people either are the ones infringing or have a vested interest in keeping artists from recognizing their own financial power. Or scared artists.

The reality is that anyone who uses your work without paying you for it is depriving you of revenue. Anyone using your work for any reason other than purely personal, and certainly for any business, is getting something from it–increased engagement at the very least. You should be paid for that. If they aren’t paying you in advance by legitimately purchasing a license, then having them pay damages or a settlement is your only option to be made whole.

When things are slow, infringements increase in my experience. Businesses either get sloppy and fail to license work they use, often because of budget cuts (fewer knowledgeable employees, for example), or they actively try to get away with using work without paying. Either way, I find I get more clients with more infringements when those same creative pros are not getting hired by their clients as much.

Moreover, this can be a mostly passive income stream. Yes, you need to register the work but, after that, it’s not that onerous2. Infringers take work you have already created, there are tools3 to find your work being used online (you can do searches as often as you choose), and, if you hire someone else to go after the infringers (like me or another lawyer4), they will do most of the work.

To be clear, I am absolutely not suggesting doing anything nefarious. No honey pots or whatever. I have, sadly, fired a couple of clients when I found out each had lied to me and had, in fact, made their work available someplace for free, then claimed infringing uses. DO NOT DO THAT, EVER.

No, what I am saying is that you should register the copyrights in your work and look to see if those works are being used without permission or license. If you find that you have work that is being used improperly, go after the infringer(s). They owe you.

When things are slow, the money you make from this can (help) get you over the hump.

__________________

  1. I’m a big believer in marketing more when things are slow, not less. How can you get more business by being less seen? Makes no sense to me. If everyone is pulling back, it’s a great time to break through the clutter and get seen! ↩︎
  2. And, really, registering your work is not onerous anyway–it can be daunting the first time or so, but quickly it becomes a familiar process. ↩︎
  3. E.g., https://copyseeker.net/; or browser add-ons like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/image-reverse-search/?src=search ↩︎
  4. There are companies/”services” that do this, but I think they take far too big of a cut for what they provide; they also generally get you less in settlement, per infringement, than a lawyer will. ↩︎
Posted on

Undercharging

Ever since I first got into the photo biz as a studio manager (back in the last century), lowballing has been a problem. Usually, this is not done intentionally but rather out of fear and not knowing the actual value of the work.

Here’s a little data point that might help you understand value better: a general rule of thumb that companies use when budgeting their marketing and advertising projects is 10% creative costs; 90% placement/media.

You read that right 10% of the budget goes to creative costs, 90% to buying the placement/media.

Now “creative costs” are inclusive of things like talent; but I suspect that, even with that, many of you are undercharging. Some of you are way undercharging.

What are companies marketing/advertising budgets? Well, the consensus is that companies should budget at least 5% of their gross revenue (that is their sales–what they bring in before any costs or deductions), but some say it should be more like 7-10% for a small business. I read one article recently that said 15%! Here is a good breakdown of actual numbers from Small Business Trends. When you look at those numbers, and those are for small businesses, are you charging enough for your work?

Look, your clients are almost never going to tell you the truth about what their budgets are and how much others charge. The latter, especially. When I was a rep, I had some poor fool tell me that Photographer X estimated 10% of what my guy was asking…not knowing that I also repped Photographer X who wasn’t even asked to estimate on the project. Whoops! So I counsel doing your own homework.

If you take the time to learn what your clients are actually spending (and learn the language for all the various marketing channels, etc., so you sound like you know what you are talking about, too), you will be able to increase your rates with more confidence.

Finally, never be concerned about what you hear others are charging–it’s likely untrue and, if it is true, matching those numbers is a sure way to fail. Next time you do an estimate, do your research and present a higher rate. If the client balks, don’t over-explain–just say that you are confident that your total numbers are well under the 10% of the budget rule-of-thumb number they have for that marketing project.

Posted on

Real, Human Lawyering

I have been reading more and more articles about lawyers using AI to do their jobs. This, in my mind, is malpractice. The whole point of lawyering is to think; offloading that to some LLM makes no sense at all.

AI/LLMs aren’t even good at it, actually. There are more cases every day where a lawyer gets sanctioned for submitting a brief with fake citations. These are irritatingly called “AI hallucinations,” something that implies sentience and which the machines do not actually have. Whatever, these errors happen often. The tools produce answers their creators think we want–what will make us pleased. Need a citation to say what your client did was okay but there really isn’t a case that says that? No problem, one will be invented. Ugh!

Why use a tool when it can’t even do what it is supposed to with any accuracy and without legitimacy?

I won’t. In fact, I feel confident in saying I will NEVER use AI in my practice. I got rid of my Microsoft 365 subscription when it forced Copilot into its tools. I turned off Apple Intelligence. I am now running my practice using tools that reside on my devices, not the “cloud” and which do not access any LLM/AI-tool that I am aware of. My bookkeeping, trust accounting, case management…all of it is done offline. Research is necessarily online, but even there I try to use non-AI or the least AI-assisted tools available (this is getting harder but is something lawyers really should be fighting).

And it all works, in my opinion, better.

What you get when you hire me, then, is someone who writes all her own emails, letters, briefs, filings, and even blog posts. My work product is made by me, period. It is my brain that researches the law, the facts, and puts the pieces together to tell your story, argues your case, negotiates and persuades. If I cite a case it is because I have read the actual case and think it applies, not because some LLM has spit out a summary of it to give me what, in its digital mind, is a pleasing answer.

AI/LLMs promise speed and increased work volume–a lawyer can handle more cases with these tools, we are sold. But, in my book, I would rather be a better, more human lawyer than one with a gazillion cases. I am rather like an artisanal worker, like the guys who made and installed some windows in my 100-year-old house: the windows were custom made and fitted with extreme care. Your matters matter to me, and I will always do my best to give each matter the full attention it deserves, not offload my work to some digital tool that, frankly, is incapable of caring.

I care. It is why I became a lawyer in the first place.

Posted on

This Isn’t a Humblebrag; It’s a Buttkick

I was reminded by a client recently that what I do actually has changed (at least some of) my clients’ lives for the better. That was very meaningful for me. While of course I need to make a living, I do what I do to try to help creatives be successful (at least financially). When I hear that I have succeeded in helping, that makes me feel great.

For example, I helped fully-fund one client’s retirement accounts; for another, some serious and unexpected home repairs were much less a problem. I’ve had other clients, over the years, tell me I helped pay for vacations or their kids’ college funds. All sorts of things that simply made their lives a bit (or a lot) better.

To be sure, none of these were huge cases. I do not have any million-dollar awards or settlements…. not even close, to be honest. There have been some that have been larger, relatively speaking, but mostly my practice consists of handling what many people would see as “small” cases.

What do I mean by small? I did some math to figure that out. Most single-infringement, pre-litigation settlements in my practice lately (2024-2025) land between $7,500 to $12,0001. In the legal world, those are not big numbers. But for the artists I represent, they are not insignificant. Those numbers mean roughly $4,750 to $7,700 in the client’s pocket2. Per case. Most of my clients find multiple infringements that they ask me to pursue so, it is not at all unusual for a client to net (that is, after paying me), over a year, more than $30K or $40K. Sometimes, much more.

In other words, these cases, although what many people would call small, add up.

The key to these cases, almost always, is that the client has a timely registration. I’ve nagged about that for years, but look at the return! You can register multiple works (photos, 2-D art, blog posts, etc.) with one application and one fee (usually $55-$85, depending on the kind of works). If the work infringed is registered before the infringement at issue started3, then the minimum statutory damages (if the case is litigated) are $750 (up to $30K for non-willful). You also may be awarded attorney’s fees. That statutory (that is, written into the law) reality and the case law supporting the amounts make it possible for me to negotiate settlements like mentioned above, in many cases4.

And yet, I still have difficulty convincing some creators to register their copyrights and go after infringers. Like having that additional revenue isn’t worth the effort. That makes no sense to me. Artists of all stripes work hard to make their work (even when they feel it is easy themselves); why let someone rip it off? It isn’t a compliment to have some business use your work–it is a way to exploit your talent and efforts for its own benefit. As long as we live in a capitalistic society, you will need to make money and your work is valuable. The companies that use your work know that–they chose your work to make money… for themselves. By pursuing infringers you are not begging but rather standing up for yourself, your work, your talent, your own business.

So yeah, it feels great to know that I help people. But it is frustrating to know that I could be doing more for more of you. So please, whether you ever work with me or someone else, get off your butts, register your work, and stand up to the infringers.

_______________

  1. REMEMBER! Previous results are not predictive of future results and each case is its own thing; just because someone got $10,000 for a case, for example, doesn’t mean you or anyone else will for a similar case. ↩︎
  2. The contingency fees (a percentage of the gross settlement or award) I charge are negotiated with each client prior to us working together. ↩︎
  3. Or if the registration is within 3 calendar months of first publication of the work. ↩︎
  4. Certainly not all cases, though. Some infringers will not negotiate, for example, meaning the case must be litigated or dropped by the client. ↩︎
Posted on

Timeliness

I recently had a client bring me a lovely case with multiple images infringed. Nice and clean with registered copyrights and everything. An almost perfect case…

…until I looked at the Effective Date of the registration and the source code of the online use. Sadly, the use started mere days before the Effective Date and so the registration was not timely. While the client could still get actual damages (and infringer’s profits if any), that would be a low number based on the client’s provable license fee rate; so it made the case not something I could take on a contingency-fee basis. Bummer!

Registration is wonderful for protecting your work and adding to your recovery for an infringement, but its timeliness is a big, hard line to those benefits. Sadly, lots of people misunderstand timeliness. I hope this post helps clear up some of the misconceptions.

When you register a copyright (or a group), the registration will be issued with an Effective Date[1]. That date is the magic number—the key. For any infringement that actually starts after that date, you can get statutory damages and (maybe) attorney’s fees. These are called “enhanced remedies,” by the way. Statutory damages go from $750 to $30,000 for non-willful infringement, and up to $150,000 for willful. That’s a lot of room to negotiate a decent pre-suit settlement or, if you have to litigate, to get a valuable award. 

But that date is, like I said, a hard line. There is no wiggle room, outside of one exception I’ll explain in a second. So, if your Effective Date is July 1, 2024 and the infringement actually started on July 2, 2024, cool! But if the infringement actually started on June 30, 2024, the registration is not timely and you can’t get those enhanced remedies. 

Why do I keep saying actually, in italics? Because the date at issue is not when you find the infringement but rather the date the infringer began violating your rights—copying, displaying, etc., whether you knew it or not yet. If your Effective Date is July 1, 2024 and you found the infringement on December 1, 2024, that doesn’t make the registration timely; you need to find out when the infringement started to know if your registration is timely.

Now, about that one exception I mentioned earlier, this is something people screw up often so, pay attention. If you register your copyright in a work within three calendar months from the date of that work’s first publication, the law works some magic and you can get enhanced remedies for any infringement that started after that first publication date. Congress did this to try to fix the hole where a work is made and quickly published and quickly ripped off, before you get it registered. It’s a solid fix, IF you register your work in time. 

First publication is a technical, legal thing, for added crazy here. Publication has a nebulous definition in copyright law—it doesn’t always match with what any normal human would think of as publication. If you offer the work for sale or licensing, it is published on the date you do that, even if the work doesn’t get seen by anyone until later! So, for example, if you shoot for a client, the date of first publication will be the date your deliver the work to the client (digitally, hard copies, whatever) even if they don’t run the work until later. If you shoot for yourself, then a month later post the work on your website and offer it for stock licensing, the date you post it will be its first publication. BUT, if you make a work and post it on, say, your blog without explicitly offering it for licensing, then it is (likely) NOT published. 

I know, crazy, right? The easy fix is to always include a line about your work being available for licensing, even on your blog or Instagram or whatever. Then, boom, it’s published and you have a date for that. 

To best protect your work, do a group published[2] photographs registration every year on March 31 (for works first published from Jan 1–Mar 31), June 30 (Apr 1 – June 30), September 30 (Jul 1 – Sept 30), December 31 (Oct 1–Dec 31) of each year. That way, ALL your published photos for the year will be timely registered, no matter what. Any infringement of those photos will be eligible for enhanced remedies. Yay!

Then, when you contact any copyright lawyer (like me) with a potential infringement matter, we will be much more likely to be able to help you on a contingency fee (meaning you pay no fees unless we recover something for you).

[1] This date is usually the date you submit the application online, by the way. Even if you don’t get the certificate until much later, the Effective Date will almost always be the application date.

[2] Group Published Photographs registrations require that the works be first published within the same calendar year—this schedule takes that into consideration. See https://copyright.gov/circs/circ42.pdf.

Posted on

Control

Artists of all stripes are control freaks. That is not an insult—it is a simple statement of fact. Anyone with a desire to create does so because they want to control…something. Their environment. Their past. Their pain. Their joy. Their space. Their right to be who they are. Something.

So I find it super odd that so many creatives don’t take control of their businesses. 

You spend all this effort and take all these risks to create. Why aren’t more of you doing whatever you can to protect what you create and to make a living from your creations? 

An artist will fight for their vision—making something because they simply want to create, must create, and they must do it the way they envision it, and they do without apology for that vision. 

But then they will apologize for asking for money for that creation or for the rights to reproduce that creation. Or buy into the story sold to them by those who do not, cannot create: getting paid to make art is a defilement of, an anathema to Art. 

Until humans get to the Star Trek future where money doesn’t exist, the rich will always try to exploit the poor, especially the artists, by selling them ideas like that, or that an artist is lucky to get exposure.

It is bullshit. 

You have every right (and need) to make money. What you do is of great value—that is why the rich spend millions, if not billions, trying to invent artificial ways to do what you do (think AI). They can’t do it. Not yet and, in my opinion, not ever. Art cannot be created by inorganic things, ever; a thing might “create” something—but it will be soulless, for sure. Art is not art if it has not soul. 

So, you have this amazing and valuable ability—control the business side of that and you can make your life’s necessary money, or even more. So start doing that, please.

Some of the things you can do are: registering your copyrights, having good licensing language, saying “no” to bad deals, pursuing infringers, and protecting your personal assets by creating an entity for your business (LLC, S-corp). Other things are working with someone like me when you need help in those areas (and other legal stuff) and working with a CPA to help get a handle on your taxes and finances. Yes, you may have to spend some money for some of that help, but it is more like a very safe investment than an expense: it has a very strong likelihood to pay off in the long run.

Posted on

Update Your Contracts

A client informed me yesterday that Vox Media had announced a partnership with OpenAI that permitted that leech-of-a-tool to use Vox Media content to train. This is bad and very likely goes beyond agreements it has with many writers and photographers, but it’s going to do it anyway because tech companies have no decency and too many media companies have no spines.

So, first, if you have work that you have licensed to Vox Media, check the language in your agreements and, assuming you didn’t sign away too much already, contact Vox to remind them that your work cannot be used for AI-training purposes. Period. Don’t let them try to talk you into some piddly bump in fees–what they are doing is enabling tech to put you entirely out of your work so just say “No.” You need to think long term here–an extra few bucks here isn’t worth torpedoing your particular creative industry.

Second, look at your own contracts, which you should be using anyway but, yeah, I know, you probably don’t because the bigger companies are bullies about that. Anyway, you should add something to your own contracts that makes it absolutely clear that any use that may result in the training of AI is not permitted under your license. You need this for contracts you use with individuals (like for event/wedding photography) as well as for companies for their marketing or advertising use.

Remember, when you permit your clients to use your work on certain platforms, you are permitting those platforms to use your work to train AI. That is bad. Spectacularly bad. So don’t do it. Make it absolutely unambiguous–if they do that you will sue them for infringement.

Finally, if you aren’t already, start registering your copyrights. Now. It’s the best tool you have to fight these sharks. Don’t think “I can still use the CCB if my work isn’t registered” because (a) you still have to register your work to sue using the CCB; and (b) you won’t get very much from the CCB, especially if your work is not timely registered (no more than $7500, and probably MUCH less).

Posted on

Say Yes to No

I’m a firm believer in saying yes and generally being positive about things; have done for years. For example, if a client has a technically gnarly project, saying “Oh, that looks super hard” and then explaining how much work it is going to be or, worse, even hinting that you might fail, is not a good idea for your business. Instead, saying “Oh, that looks super hard…I love a challenge! I’m sure my team and I will find a solution!” will engender confidence in your client. Later, when you hand them a big estimate, they’ll remember you as the creative who said they could do it, increasing your chances of winning the project even with big numbers. So saying yes is a great thing for your business… except when it isn’t.

How often have you heard a (potential) client send you a contract and say “Everyone agrees to this” or “Oh, sure, the doc says you are assigning us your copyrights and that you can’t use the work, but we’ll let you use it” or “It’s industry standard to have a 90-day payment period,” or “You have to indemnify us against any claim that arises when you’re shooting for us, not just those related to your work or employees–no one ever makes an issue of that” etc. ? A bunch, I’ll bet and I bet you’ve often accepted those terms, trusting your client. Then, later…well, as Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls says,“Daddy, I got cider in my ear!”

The sad truth is that, whenever someone in a financial transaction with you says one thing but the paperwork says another, they have an ulterior motive and it ain’t good for you. Hearing anything like “oh, don’t worry…” or “You’re the only person who has ever asked…” is your signal that you absolutely must go with what the papers say. Always. Your clients, no matter how nice, are not on your side. They can’t be—they are negotiating for their best deal, not yours. You can like them, but don’t ever trust their word over what is on the page.

The terms they are insisting on are good…good for them, that is, and so they do use them. If they didn’t, the terms would not be there. Always. So, if they are saying “oh, we never do this thing the contract says we can do” and they won’t take it out, then you know they want to do exactly what they claim they never do, and will do exactly that if they can. 

Relatedly, if your client/buyer tells you “my way or the highway,” waste no time in politely taking the second option. As the current writers’ and actors’ strikes confirm, bullying and fear-mongering is pervasive in the creative industries. All of them. Threats about not getting work are just manipulative bullshit. You didn’t have the gig but then lose it by saying “no”; nope, they just wanted to scare you into accepting a bad deal. Walk away. Use the time to get a better client. 

Don’t bother trying to fix them or teach them the errors of their ways. You can’t control what your clients/buyers do and you’ll drive yourself mad if you try. But, you can control what you do. 

The first thing is to know where your boundaries are. You can negotiate lots of things, but you should always know what lines you will not cross and respect those limits. No one will respect them if you don’t. You can and I think MUST set your own limits; and you should do it before any negotiations so that you know what they are. Write them out like a list if that helps: will never sell copyrights; will only indemnify for my own actions; will not lower my price without getting something (besides just getting the gig) in return; etc. 

Once you have your limits defined, then you can respond rationally to whatever demands are made. So, for example, if a client insists on owning your copyrights created for the project, you can say “No” if your line is ownership, or, if you’re willing to sell at the right price, say “Not at this price—if you want full ownership, that will cost $X.”  Don’t explain, don’t rationalize, and don’t be suckered in by them. Stick to your own boundaries. For example, “I hear you, but I won’t sell my copyrights for this price–you need to either pay more or get a license instead.” If they ask “Why?” you can simply say that this is how you run your business. Period.

You can use your boundary list for contract negotiations of all kinds: time to pay, deposits, usage license terms, indemnification clauses, you name it. When you do that, you are taking good care of your business: You set your limits. You have control. 

Saying “no” to bad terms and bad deals does not make you a jerk, it makes you a smart businessperson. And, although standing up for your rights and doing what is best for you and your business is not always easy, it is vital. The other side is surely going to stand up for theirs.

Posted on

Drop Your Ego and Raise Your Usage Fees

I have written before about the importance of separating your fees and costs/expenses on your invoices (actually, on all your paperwork) so I’m not going to go into that again, but I will once again nag you to make your license fees the largest number of your fees, if at all possible. Why? Because there is a new (tentative) ruling in the CCB that shows how low license fees can hurt you.

In this case, a photographer made the work as a part of a large shoot for a client. His original bill was well into the six figures, yay! However, as the Board notes:

During the shoot, Hursey shot approximately forty-two scenes, with a scene consisting of multiple versions of the same setting and activity with minor differences. Hearing Tr. at 39:00 – 39: 57. In the present case, the scene consisted of a family at a picnic with a pastoral background. Evidence Doc B (Dkt. 17). Hursey was paid $185,524.45 in total for the shoot, but most of that amount was reimbursement for costs and payment for his time, while $17,500 was for an unlimited license to use all of the photographs taken over the course of the shoot. 

Proposed Default Determination, at p.3 (bold added)

An unlimited license should definitely be the largest number on your paperwork–it is HUGE usage! Let’s conservatively estimate that in this project, the photographer provided finals of 3 variations of 42 scenes, or a total of 126 images (it was likely much more, of course), $17500 divided by 126 is a whopping $138.89 per photo licensed. That’s insane.

Photographers and other creatives have got to stop billing their Creative Fee as if it is the most important thing. That is just your ego talking–a bigger Creative Fee means YOU are somehow worth more…. **HURL**! It’s short-sighted, at best.

Worse, using time as the basis of your Creative Fee makes you into the equivalent of a wage slave and insults your professionalism. It doesn’t matter if it takes you 30 minutes or 3 days to create your work–it is your TALENT and ABILITIES that count. If you have 30 years of experience and can make the difficult shot in an hour where a newer photographer would take all day, why should you be penalized for that?! So, stop billing as if time and your ego matter. Instead, think long term: you can re-license for more if you bill more for usage from the start! And it will help you if you ever get ripped off. Bill a reasonable Creative Fee, not time-based, and bill a large (but reasonable) Usage License Fee.

On the good side in the case cited above, the photographer has an online calculator for his stock licenses and that provided a number of $1000.70 for the same use as the infringer made of the photograph (still too low, in my opinion, but better). The Board relied on that number and awarded $3000 for the infringement here. Id. at 9. Whew. I mean, I think that is still way too low an award but it’s a hell of a lot better than 3 times $138.89. If the photographer here did not have published rates as he did, the court would very likely have awarded him $750, the minimum statutory damages available.

Respect your work by billing its worth. Your future self will thank you.

Terms of Service Proudly powered by WordPress