There are few absolutes or bright lines when it comes to copyright matters. So much is left to the judgment…
When getting rights clearance is tough
We’ve all been there. You have the perfect photo . . . verse . . . song lyrics . . . vignette . . . you name it . . . to open your book or a chapter within it. Having labored long and hard to locate just the thing, you are now certain that nothing else will do. There’s only one problem. It’s not yours and either you can’t determine who owns the rights, or you can’t figure out how to reach them, or they’re dead or out of business, or they won’t answer you.
Whose book title is it, anyway?
Professor Charlotte Smith, an up-and-coming young entomologist, decided to write a textbook for the always-popular, upper-level course on spiders. After putting out a few feelers, she submitted a proposal to Six Legs Press, a leading publisher of  books about insects. Six Legs loved the proposal and offered Professor Smith a contract. Charlotte was so abuzz with excitement—”tenure, here I come!” she yelled—that she signed the contract without even reading it.
Consequences of not following third party photo usage restrictions
Q: What happens if, notwithstanding your best intentions, a 3rd party photo usage restriction escapes your notice and your lapse is detected by the photographer or stock agency?
A: Steve Gillen, lawyer and partner in the intellectual property firm of Wood Herron & Evans:
“Well, about the best you could expect is that you will be deemed in breach of your contractual commitment and held to account for what you should have paid for the uses you actually made. More likely, however, is a claim that you have made an unauthorized and infringing use of a copyrighted work outside the scope of any license you might have had. In this event, the copyright owner has some very potent strategic advantages and remedies at his/her disposal:
What you need to know about using third party photos
Today’s business models for licensing third party photography are sufficiently complex that it’s worth taking a few minutes to review…
How to apply for copyright
Lisa Moore, Principal, The Moore Firm, LLC:
“It’s very easy to apply for a copyright registration. You can do it online. The Copyright Office’s website is actually an excellent resource.
The process is changing. Back in the day, you had to fill out the form depending on what you were registering. The Copyright Office changed that, and they’re now utilizing one common form that can be done online. It’s much cheaper that way, $35 and you get your registration back much more quickly. If you mail in the old paper forms it takes somewhere between a year and two years to get it back, but if you do it online it’s somewhere between three and six months.