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Photo protection company ImageRights International, a Boston-based business with offices in Seattle and Berlin, has launched a new image copyright registration system that anyone can use, not just subscribers. The company offers both a Lightroom plugin and a website-based registration tool that streamlines registrations, including automatically checking for errors and filling in forms.
ImageRights’ new copyright registration option costs $ 100 on top of the US Copyright Office fee ($ 35 or higher). This is compared to ImageRights’ subscriber plans, which charge $ 69 for registering a single image and $ 89 for registering multiple images. On top of that, the company offers subscribers additional services such as assessing infringement claims, finding unauthorized uses of a registered photo, and more. But now you don’t need to subscribe to take advantage of their streamlined registration system.
In addition, ImageRights is taking a cue from Binded (formerly Blokai) by launching a Bitcoin blockchain record that uses the technology to save the ImageRights Deposit Copy Certificate of Warranty document it creates when someone uses its service to register a photo. Talking to PDN about this, ImageRights CEO Joe Naylor explained:
We make a hash of this [warranty] document and inscribe it into the Bitcoin Blockchain. This is a tool that helps us during an infringement settlement discussion when the other party questions whether or not an image was really covered by the USCO registration certificate that we say it is. We can show them the warranty where they can now see a visual representation of the image (the thumbnail) associated with the USCO Registration number. And to help prove that we didn’t just fabricate the document when they challenged us, we can show that from the blockchain inscription records that this document existed at that date.
ImageRights is one of multiple services that helps photographers register their image copyrights, though it says it is the only one with a fully automated registration system. Binded is a popular alternative, and it recently announced free one-click registrations.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)