Copyright NowProtect your work

Helping photographers protect their work

We organize. You file.
Bjorn Iooss
Fashion & portrait
“Gap shoot from 2026. I like to register each shoot as soon as the campaign is launched.”
Studio portrait, a model wrapped in a large red satin bow
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Portrait in a leather bomber jacket, seated on a ledge
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Beauty studio portrait, seated on a black chaise
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Black and white portrait in a tweed suit
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2 application packets created on copyrightnow.io in one session
16 published 5.29.2026 · 211 unpublished
© 2026 Bjorn Iooss
Constance Faulk
Commercial & fine art
“Finally registered for copyright a career's worth of selects I've been meaning to do spanning years.”
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U
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11 application packets created on copyrightnow.io in 3 sessions
121 published · 2,610 unpublished
© 2026 Constance Faulk
Scan, sort, plan, prepare

Copyright registration prep made easy.

Registering photographs correctly is tedious bookkeeping at best. Our system reduces the pain so you can Copyright Now and get the gain.

See how it works
01Scan
On your own
Open files one by one to check capture dates, or guess.
With Copyright Now
Reads every file on your machine. Nothing is uploaded and nothing on your drive is moved, renamed, or altered.
02Sort
On your own
Work out published versus unpublished for every image, split by calendar year, and keep every group under 750.
With Copyright Now
After the scan we sort in preparation for the application. One question per collection, folder names suggest the answer, and you confirm each so everything is accurate.
03Plan
On your own
Read Copyright Office circulars to work out how many separate applications you need.
With Copyright Now
We work out the exact, and fewest, applications you need to file with the US Copyright Office, the fees for each, and what would have been refused.
04Prepare
On your own
Type a row per photograph into the Copyright Office spreadsheet: filename, title, publication month and year. A single group can hold up to 750 photographs.
With Copyright Now
Application packets with the real files, forms, and directions from the work above, created and ready for you to Copyright Now.
The 750-photograph limit is the Copyright Office's own cap on a group registration, not our estimate. Preparation covers the spreadsheet and the deposit structure. You file on copyright.gov yourself, and we do not alter, rename, or convert anything on your drive.
Why register

Registration is the baseline. Everything else you might do to defend your work comes after it.

Copyright exists the moment you press the shutter, and it lasts your lifetime plus seventy years. Registration is what makes it enforceable.

Photography theft is not new. It got worse with the internet, and it is accelerating now that images are being swept into training data at a scale that did not exist five years ago. AI is the latest reason to register, not the first one, and it will not be the last.

Why registration matters
What registration actually changes
Registered in time
Register a photograph before an infringement begins, or within three months of first publication, and statutory damages and attorney's fees become available. That is what makes a case worth a lawyer's time.
Not registered
Miss that window and you are left with actual damages. For a single photograph that is usually the licensing fee the infringer skipped, minus what you now pay your own lawyer to collect it.
Same photograph. Same theft. Two completely different outcomes.
It costs less than you think

The Copyright Office lets you register up to 750 photographs in a single application for $55. Not $55 each. $55 for the group.

That fee rises to $85 in mid-November 2026.

The cost was never the fee

It is the paperwork. Published and unpublished work cannot share an application. Published work cannot span more than one calendar year. Every photograph needs its own row on a spreadsheet in the Office's format, with a title, a filename, and a publication date. Sorting an archive into valid groups and building a deposit the Office will accept is bureaucratic, tedious, and easy to get wrong.

That is why most working photographers never start, and it is the part Copyright Now handles.

The fee has not moved in years. What has changed is the work around it.

FAQ
The assessment is free and unlimited. You only pay if you ask for the filing packet.
No. The scan runs in your browser and reads files locally. Nothing is uploaded, and you do not need an account to run the assessment.
No. We prepare everything the Copyright Office asks for: the spreadsheet for each application, your files organized to match it, and step-by-step directions. You submit it yourself on copyright.gov, where you start each application to get a case number.
$49.99, covering every application in your plan. Copyright Office fees are separate and paid directly to them.
A Copyright Office spreadsheet for each application, and your photographs named and ordered to match it row for row. A large application arrives as several archives, each kept under the Office's 500 MB upload limit, so every one uploads cleanly.
Registration timing is set by the Copyright Office, not by us. Current processing times are published on copyright.gov.
See what your archive needs. It takes a few minutes.
Get Free © Plan
Free. Nothing uploaded. No sign-up to run it.