Reddit mentions of MORE Best Business Practices for Photographers

This happens to me a lot. I'm in the US and we have very good protections for copyright, especially if you register your images with the US copyright office. You have copyright to any picture you take (unless you sign a contract giving away copyright), but registering allows you to collect substantially more in legal damages than if you don't register. Without registration, my understanding is that you can recover something like the fair market value of the licensing....not much money at all. With registration, you can be awarded up to USD$150,000 per infringement.

I've never gone to court, but I do register every image I take (~60-100k per year). I use a method based on John Harrington's bulk registration method described in his second book More Best Business Practices for Photographers. His first book is worth getting, too. Registration here is $55 per registration, but I can register thousands of images per registration and I easily make up the $500/year costs early in the year each year either through an image license or getting a settlement from an infringement. And it's all written off as a business expense.

Of course, this is all US specific, but maybe your country has something similar.

Having registered my images, I now have a huge tool at my disposal with which to make infringers quickly want to resolve these disputes. Basically, they will always pay a few thousand instead of paying $150,000. The catch is that you need to have the image registered before the infringement, or, in the case of a very new image, within 3 months of first publication (this gives you a grace period in the case of taking an assignment for a newspaper, it getting published the next day, and getting infringed the next day..you still have 3 months minus 2 days to get it registered and be fully protected for that initial infringement). Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so double check all this.

Once I discover an infringement, I basically follow this guide: Help I've Been Infringed.

I contact the publication, say what I've found, say my images are registered, and ask how they want to resolve this issue, stating calmly but forcefully that I pursue all copyright infringement and unauthorized usage.

They usually come back with a tiny amount. As a recent example, a major US magazine that you've probably heard of used one of my pictures in spot size (supplied by the subject of the article...that's another story!) both in print and online. I did my usual thing and they came back saying, "Well, we usually pay $125 for this sort of usage but we'll pay double as a sign of good faith." Now, I know licensing pretty well, and even double was lower than what I would've charged for this usage/circulation had they come to me to license the image. I countered and said again that my images were registered and that my standard fee for this is like $600 or more and that for infringements I charge an additional 3x. The lowest I would accept is $2500. There are a few strategies at play: I want to get paid and I want the publication to feel the hurt of unauthorized usage a little. But this is a publication that I might work for in the future, so I don't want to burn bridges too much.

Anyway, the editor (now dealing with the DOP) said they'd get back to me. This usually means they're talking with their lawyers to see what they can get away with. This time, and every time, they come back and say my fee is ok, and where can we send the check?

In the past, by the way, I have gotten subsequent work from an infringing publication after this process. Not always...I think I've burned every bridge with CNN after a particularly ugly back and forth on their part that forced me to really dig my heels in. But my philosophy is if the negotiations go nuclear, I probably don't want to work with them in the future anyway.

Good luck! After writing all that, my basic advice is: ask for more money and be firm but cordial and professional. Figure out if there's a way for your country's legal system to offer more protections to you in this case and future cases.