Copyright considerations for digitizing photo collections are a two-way street. On one hand, you may have photos you own that you’ll want to register copyright for. And on the other hand, you might have photos in your collection that are copyrighted by others. I lay out some of the considerations in Digitizing Your Photos. And on this page I have some links for additional research or action.
Registration Tutorials
Here’s a nice overview of the process by attorney Carolyn Wright. She has a very comprehensive blog/site on copyright issues, and is available for consultation and cases.
Here’s another guide from Petapixel‘s Michael Archambault.
Consultants
Jeff Sedlik is one of the most knowledgeable people around when it comes to copyright. He is the director of the PLUS Coalition, which is working to make photographic usage rights machine readable. He is available for paid consultation. Jeff provided important advice and perspective as I was finalizing Digitizing Your Photos.
Creative Commons – allowing others to use your photos
As I outline in Digitizing Your Photos, some readers may want to allow usage of photos. A Creative Commons license can help you specify what you’ll allow, and help remove doubt. You can specify that credit be give, allow or deny commercial usage, and specify whether the photo can be altered. Creative Commons licenses are multi-lingual, and are valid over much of the world. Of course, you are only allowed to apply a Creative Commons license to photos you are the owner of. Read more about Creative Commons here.