How to Copyright in Batches of 10

The social media art challenge prompts are an excellent way for artists to express themselves, let their creativity flow, and get their work out there. Prompts are usually keywords, which can be anything from a single word to a sentence. I have a couple of favorites that I follow and participate in during the month of October; Facetober and Peachtober. During 2021, I created the Darcy Inventory based on the Facetober prompts and that series has gone on to be included in professional art exhibitions, like ArtFields.

The Facetober challenge is created by a Skillshare top teacher, British designer and illustrator Charly Clements. The prompts Charly creates helps people find new ways of self-expression through short-form portraits. This is an excellent opportunity for artists who prefer drawing or painting people instead of landscapes or other subjects to showcase their skills.

Above, Facetober 2022 day 3 (braid, gold, and magic) by Dawn Hunter, watercolor, ink and acrylic on paper.

Link, here, to the 2021 Facetober Darcy Inventory portraits.

Sha'an d'Anthes, an illustrator, artist, and author, created the social media art challenge Peachtober. She is the creator of the highly engaged Instagram account @furrylittlepeach, which features many of her creative projects, reels, and sneak peeks into her studio. The challenge for Peachtober is open-ended one word prompts, with various concepts and subjects that can be experimented with for the month.

If you are looking for social media engagement and connections with other artists while expanding your studio practice, both Facetober and Peachtober are excellent choices.

Sha'an d'Anthes and Charly Clements do a great job sharing their social media prompt schedule a month before the challenge starts. This gives artists plenty of lead time to gather their materials, think through the concepts, plan their work, and create artworks before the challenge starts. 

Making your artwork ahead of time is crucial because it grants you the opportunity to copyright your artwork in batches, which is cheaper than copyrighting a single artwork ($65.00 per single work registration vs. $65.00 per group registration). 

Original artwork posted on social media is a very popular form of expression, however before posting your artwork online, you should always make sure that you have copyright protection. Filing a copyright registration prior to publication also entitles you to a greater award sum for damages if an infringement occurs. 

It might sound complicated, it is much simpler than you think. 

Above, Facetober 2022 day 2 (afro, pink and animal print) by Dawn Hunter, watercolor, ink and acrylic on paper.

What is Copyright?

"Copyright is a form of protection for the rights of creators of works. It is used to give them the sole right to reproduce, distribute and create derivative works from their original work." -www.copyright.gov

Copyright is not a new idea, it has been around since the 18th century. It was first established in England in 1710 by the Statute of Anne. The United States followed suit with the Copyright Act in 1790 which has been updated over time to reflect changes in technology and society.

What's the Difference Between Copyright and Public Domain?

"Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium," such as writing, music, or artwork. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.

Public domain is the legal status of creative works that are not subject to copyright or similar rights of protection. These include ideas, facts and discoveries; news events; government publications; works created by U.S. federal "government employees as part of their official duties;" and anonymous or pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is generally known or can be reasonably ascertained).

Copyright protects original work from being used without permission from its owner - this includes copying, modifying, distributing, displaying publicly and making adaptations from it. The public domain does not offer any protection to a work - anyone can use it without permission from the author which includes copying, modifying, distributing, displaying publicly, and making adaptations from it.

An image that is posted publicly on the internet is not automatically public domain. Most people only realize they have committed copyright infringement when they are being arrested. It is important to determine authorship and receive permission to post images that you have not created. That is a topic that will be developed further in another blog post; however, I want to touch on it briefly here.

How to Register Multiple Artworks with One Application

The Copyright Office offers a way for creatives to register their individual works as a collective or compilation. The Copyright Office allows a group registration for up to ten works in one registration application.

You will need documentation of your photo, artwork, or illustration. Additionally, you will need an online eCO registration account through the U.S. Government Copyright Office, a completed online form, and a means of payment.

If your application is approved, you will be entitled to seek one award of statutory damages for the collective work as a whole, rather than a separate award for each individual work, even if the defendant infringed all of those works.

Above, Facetober 2022 day 1 (coral, red hair and sunglasses) by Dawn Hunter, watercolor, ink and acrylic on paper.

How to Copyright Your Artwork in Batches of Ten

As an artist, you're likely constantly crafting new pieces of art. You might wonder if there's a way to copyright your artwork in groups of up to ten works at once. Good news! It's totally doable and pretty simple. 

Here's the catch: for works of art to be eligible, your artwork shouldn't have been published prior to your registration application. 

Review and follow the steps below, and your work will be protected at a cost-efficient price.

1. Create an eCO account. 

Protecting your intellectual property is important for professional success. Remember to procure copyrights and trademarks for all of your art, products,  services, and branding. Protecting intellectual property with copyrights and trademarks can be time-consuming, but it's worth it. The US Copyright Office website provides excellent resources for individuals: www.copyright.gov.

2. Select "Register a Group of Unpublished Works." 

You can make the process easier by copyrighting your artwork in batches of up to ten works. For a social media challenge like, Facetober, I would recommend to register each week as a batch, especially since the prompts are organized in that manner. That would be a total of four batches and the total cost would be $260.00. If you were to registered all thirty-one works individually, the total cost would be $2,015.00.

You'll need the work's title, the year it was created, and the copyright owner. The US Copyright Office will assign you a number once you've filed your application.

3. Complete the online form prompts:

• Type of Work
• Title of Work
• Completion
• Authors/Claimants
• Limitation of Claim
• Rights and Permissions
• Correspondent
• Mail Certificate
• Special Handling
• Certification
• Review Submission

4. Fill out the online registration form and pay the fee. You can't upload extra docs or submit until the fee is processed.

5. Make a PDF with pics of each piece you want to protect, and upload it.

6. After your payment clears, double-check your application, upload any needed docs, and submit.

It'll take about 60 days for the review process, but your work will be protected once you've registered! If you work with an intellectual property lawyer, share your registration and certificate with them.

Got questions? Reach out to the copyright office!

It's a relief to have your work registered with a copyright. It is a topic that I feel passionate about, and you can learn more about how to register an individual work in my blog post from February 2022 titled Your Cheatin' Heart.

Your Cheatin' Heart

You can copyright your PowerPoint or professional presentations and probably should. How? What copyright registration format? This blog post examines the definition of plagiarism and the impact of internet access; plus lists the instructions on how to register your PowerPoint or professional presentation under the Motion Picture/Audio and Visual work through the Copyright Office of the United States Government.

What is plagiarism?

"Plagiarius" is the Latin root for plagiarism, and it means kidnapper or someone who steals children by capturing them in a net or a plaga. The word arose from ancient human behavior. Internet access has been identified as a leading "culprit" in the rise of plagiarism, so the metaphor for contemporary human behavior is not lost in its linguistic origins. ORI (Office of Research Integrity) has defined plagiarism as: "Appropriating someone else's idea (e.g., an explanation, a theory, a conclusion, a hypothesis, a metaphor) in whole or in part, or with superficial modifications without giving credit to its originator."

Strictly speaking, PowerPoints and professional presentations are automatically copyrighted when they are created; however, you can register your presentation with the Copyright Office of your nation. Presenting a PowerPoint at a professional meeting is considered a form of publication. Registering your PowerPoint presentation will ensure that you can take legal recourse if the content is plagiarized, i.e., original concepts, images, and scripted content appear, without proper citation, in someone else's work: presentations, published articles, books, blogs, websites, etc.

Comprised of Taylor & Francis, Routledge, CRC Press, F1000 Research, and Dovepress, top publishers Taylor & Francis has an entire web page devoted to various plagiarism topics, such as types of plagiarism, detecting and avoiding it. They have provided a precise definition for writers in their online content Author Services, defining the matter as the following: "For Taylor & Francis journals, this applies to data, images, words or ideas taken from any materials in electronic or print formats without sufficient attribution. This can include:

• abstracts,
• seminar presentations,
• laboratory reports,
• thesis or dissertation,
• research proposals,
• computer programs,
• online posts,
• grey literature,
• unpublished or published manuscripts.

The use of any such material either directly or indirectly should be properly acknowledged in all instances. You should always cite your source (please see 'How to avoid plagiarism' below)."

Plagiarism is common in all professions and occurs at all professional levels. Statistically, men tend to plagiarize more than women. Biological sciences in academia have the highest academic misconduct rate, which includes lifting content from others, falsely reporting data, and fabricating information or outcomes of experiments. 

In the 2013 paper, Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct, Dr. Ferric C. Fang, Dr. Joan W. Bennett, and Dr. Arturo Casadevall examine retracted articles indexed by PubMed written by biomedical and life science authors. Their study explored plagiarism, fraud (10-fold increase since 1975), duplicate publication, research error, journal error, other reasons (e.g., unresolved authorship conflict), and unknown reasons. Their study found that most retracted articles were the result of misconduct.

This graph is from the 2013 article Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct The graph comprises information that reflects the ORI definition of research misconduct. It includes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. The graph is reproduced here with permission from Dr. Ferric C. Fang and Dr. Arturo Casadevall.

In the paper Factors influencing plagiarism in higher education: A comparison of German and Slovene students, Eva Jerad et al. concluded that the field is level among both genders and nationalities. They determined through their study which included 485 participants that digital technology and access to content through the internet was the main driving force. In their paper, they cited three published definitions of plagiarism: "Perrin, Larkham, and Culwin define plagiarism as the use of an author's words, ideas, reflections and thoughts without proper acknowledgment of the author. Koul et al. define plagiarism as a form of cheating and theft since in cases of plagiarism, one person takes credit for another person's intellectual work. According to Fishman, 'Plagiarism occurs when someone: 1) uses words, ideas, or work products; 2) attributable to another identifiable person or source; 3) without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained; 4) in a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship; 5) in order to obtain some benefit, credit, or gain which need not be monetary.'"

We have examined several definitions of plagiarism from individuals and organizations within this post. Despite the form of original content format, e.g. PowerPoint, and the manifestation of the plagiarized content, e.g., book chapter, the consensus is if the content is an "intellectual work product" of another without proper attribution to the origin (whether written, spoken, performed or visual), it is plagiarism. While full of ideas, your PowerPoint is not simply "an idea." It manifests the development of ideas and is a completed work in the Audio and Visual format.

Contemporary audiences attending presentations are equipped with smartphone cameras, linked to the internet, and are sometimes actively engaged with social media platforms like Twitter. During or after a presentation, the content of professional PowerPoint presentations aren't confined to a conference or symposium audience. Novel and innovative ideas, images of original research, or unique conceptual content can be instantaneously shared, liked, and re-shared with thousands. This rapid-fire sharing can occur with or without the author's knowledge or consent and thus create research vulnerabilities. However, there are perks, too. Engagement in sharing content immediately with a broad and diverse audience can also be advantageous. Meaningful research connections can be made. Therefore, the potential for unexpected input through new collaborative relationships can foster a robust research outcome.

Above: Images from my presentation, Content and Form: Cajal's Unique Visual Language, September 29, 2017, at the National Congress of Spanish Neuroscience (SENC 2017.) Neuroscientist Dr. Carmen Agustin, Tweeted about my presentation during my talk. In her Tweets, she demonstrated professional etiquette: documented the event, showed the timeline of the ideas in the PowerPoint, and made clear that the ideas were developed from my research. Tweet thread translation, left Tweet: Dawn Hunter comparing the works of Golgi and Cajal: "Cajal draws what he sees, Golgi tries to fit what he sees into his idea." Top right Tweet: "Cajal drew with continuous lines; surely due to the influence of his maternal grandfather, a weaver." Middle right Tweet, where I present my theory "Dürer's influence on Cajal's photos." Bottom right Tweet: Dawn Hunter first recreated Cajal's drawings [through observing the primary source]; then, she has created her own works based on them. Photos and Tweets courtesy of Dr. Mari Carmen Agustin Pavon.

Above: My presentation at SENC 2017 Content and Form:  Cajal’s Unique and Inventive Visual Language, September 29, 2017, Alicante, Spain. Photo courtesy of Fernando De Castro Soubriet.

Not all passive observers possess integrity, and some can be opportunistic with the content of your work. Other times, because they viewed it on the internet, people will erroneously mistake your academic scholarship as belonging to the public domain. That is unfortunate, but it is their responsibility to clarify the origin of content before using it. Therefore, taking steps to register for your presentation is a must. It will protect your research and define the source of unique concepts and content if your research makes its way into someone else's work without a proper citation.

Information and Steps to Copyright your presentation:

What does the copyright of your PowerPoint cover?  Your content: your expression of ideas (organization, sequence, and context), scripted text that you have written that appears visually on the slide, scripted text you wrote but spoke during the presentation as it appears in your PowerPoint slide notes, and any original figures (jpegs., graphs, tables, etc.) you created for the presentation.

What your PowerPoint or presentation copyright will not cover? Photographs that are copyrighted by someone else or an organization, images that are in the public domain, or scripted text written by or copyrighted by another person, quotes or scripted text from the public domain, and figures where others hold the copyright or are from the public domain (jpegs., graphs, tables, etc.) 

How much does it cost? $65.00

Above: Slide from from my presentation, Content and Form: Cajal's Unique Visual Language, September 29, 2017 at the National Congress of Spanish Neuroscience (SENC 2017.) Red arrows indicate what will not be covered and the green arrows indicate what will be covered.

Steps to follow:

Below are the steps to follow in order to copyright register a single author PowerPoint or professional presentation in the United States. There are a few extra steps that need to be taken for multiple authors, but that is not covered in this post:

• Visit https://copyright.gov/registration/. Select the type of work that you wish to register: literary works, visual arts, other digital content, motion pictures, or photographs. If you are registering a PowerPoint, select Motion Pictures. You will be prompted to login in or create an ECO ID account.

• Check standard application and start registration for one work. (You can register unpublished works in groups or batches, but that is not going to be covered in this post.)

• You will then be taken to the online form. From the drop down menu select the Type of Work, choose Motion Picture/Audio and Visual work and confirm that it best describes what you are trying to register.

• You will proceed to the title sections. From the drop down menu select Title of Work Being Registered and Title of this Work box below, list the title of the work.

• For Publication Completion, check yes for the question if it has been publish before. For example, if you have presented it at a professional meeting or distributed it electronically or publicly on the web. If it is unpublished, check or no. If it has been published, there will be prompts to complete indicating which country and the date. It also has a section to fill in if there is a pre-existing registration number in the event your work was registered outside in a foreign country prior to the United States. If it was presented outside of the United States, but not registered outside of the United States, leave that section blank.

• Check "Add me" for the following categories: List Authors, Claimant, Limitation of Claim, Rights & Permissions, Correspondent, and Mail Certificate.  Please note, under Limitation of Claim in addition to adding yourself, you will need to indicate what content is excluded from the registration, e.g., figures or text you have not authored.

• Special Handling can be left blank. However if you are pursuing legal litigation and have a pending court case or other dispute, customs matters, or a contract or publishing deadline, check the appropriate category and explain the reason in the space provided. Keep in mind that Special Handing will increase the cost of your claim by $760.00, thus the total application fee could be as much as $825.00.

• Once the form is filled out you will certify that everything you have submitted is true. You will have the opportunity to review and correct your application. When you complete your review and corrections as needed, add your application to the cart and proceed to check out. You will be taken off site to submit your $65.00 non-refundable payment. 

• Once your payment is completed, you will then be able to submit the work that you want to register for review. Select the Submit Work tab and follow the instructions. You can submit your PowerPoint or professional presentation electronically (recommended) or print it and mail in a hard copy of it. If you submit your work electronically, take time to review the specifications for file size restrictions and recommended files. For any type of professional presentation, I recommend a PDF. If you select that you wish to mail in a hard copy of the for review, you will need to select "generate a label." A label will be generated that you must attach to the work you mail directly to the United States Copyright Office.

Best of luck registering your work. Stay tuned - please visit this blog again in the future. I will be posting about how to copyright individual artworks, batches of artworks, photographs, blogs, websites, literary works and more!

Bibliography:

Singer: Hank Williams, Song Writer: Hank Williams, Your, Cheatin' Heart, A-side Kaw-liga, MGM K 11416-B, 1952. Producer: Fred Rose.

Fang FC, Bennett JW, Casadevall A. Males are overrepresented among life science researchers committing scientific misconduct. mBio. 2013 Jan 22;4(1):e00640-12. doi: 10.1128/mBio.00640-12. PMID: 23341553; PMCID: PMC3551552.

Jereb, E., Perc, M., Lämmlein, B., Jerebic, J., Urh, M., Podbregar, I., & Šprajc, P. (2018). Factors influencing plagiarism in higher education: A comparison of German and Slovene students. PloS one, 13(8), e0202252. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.020225