THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: Hey. So about a month ago, I posted a short reel. Whatever it was about the US copyright changes. And yeah, the video was only like a minute long. But the comments from you artists were not on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on YouTube. Lots of comments. Artists asking about paintings from years ago, artists asking about whether they have to sell something in order to protect it. And one thing that came up a lot is why register anything if a lawyer wants a lot of money just to look at the case? And these are business questions as much as legal ones, they definitely deserve more than a one minute reel. So today I’m answering them.
Speaker 2: It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast. An Art World Insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: I’m Miriam Schulman. I’m author of the book Artpreneur. I’m the creator of The Inspiration Place, and I’m the founder of the artist incubator program. So one thing super important before we start, I’m an artist and a business coach, but I am not your attorney. So this is an educational information about us copyright, not legal advice for your situation. If you’re in the middle of a dispute, talk to a qualified copyright attorney. If you’re outside the US, yes, we have something for you too. There’s a segment at the end, but I would make sure you verify anything I say with your attorney before moving forward. Okay. Let’s get into this. If you’re watching this on YouTube and you’re not subscribed yet, hey, you’re missing out. Hit that. Subscribe. And I answer questions like these every week. All right, now let’s get into what actually changed on February 17th of 2026. The US Copyright Office opened a new option called route Registration of two Dimensional artwork. And the short name for that is G 2D. Now this lets you register between 2 and 20 published two dimensional artworks with one application and one fee. The fee is currently $85. Now, before this registering published paintings one at a time meant paying per artwork, which was somewhere between 45 and $65, depending on the application. So 20 paintings at $45 could be $900, but through GR, 2D 20 eligible paintings will cost you $85, which is only $4.25 a painting.
Miriam Schulman: Now, each painting in a group is still registered as its own separate work, so you’re not registering one clump and calling it my 2025 paintings, which is good news. You are registering each piece. By the end of this episode, you’ll know which registration route fits your art. You’ll know why timing matters more than making sure you have all 20 registered, and you’ll know your real options if somebody uses your artwork without permission. The biggest question that came up, and I don’t blame me for asking, is, isn’t my art already copyrighted? Yeah, there are a few of these comments because a lot of you were thinking the same thing. Here’s an example of one. If you create it, you own the copyright or I thought proof of creation and date were enough. Why should I have to pay? Okay, the moment you create something original and exist in physical form, it is protected in the US copyright. So registration doesn’t create your copyright. You do already own it. The confusion comes from three different things that are getting mashed together. So yes, owning the copyright, you get that for free. However, having a registration on the public record that cost a filing fee, doing something when someone copies your work. That’s when registration starts to matter for us. Works. You generally can’t file a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court until you have a registration, or until the office has refused one. And when you register affects what you can recover.
Miriam Schulman: That’s the part most people get wrong. And we are going to get into that. Now, your signature and the the seeing the circle symbol and dated photos of your process. They don’t replace the registration. Keep doing those records anyway. Records like that will help show what you made and when. But they aren’t the same thing as a government record. A registration certificate also doesn’t mean that you’ll win, but it does mean you have options that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Owning your copyright and choosing the right application. Two separate questions. Let’s talk about who qualifies and what exactly you need to do. So GRD is for published two dimensional work. Yeah, you get it. Published paintings, illustrations, drawings, sketches, collages and most 2D art fits this. Every work in the group has to be by the same. I think the legal term is author but the same artist and that is automatically the claimant. If you made a piece with another artist doesn’t go in this group. Now sculpture can be put in this three dimensional work. No, and it’s not for photographs either. And be careful with that last one. When you photograph your painting to upload it. You’re registering the painting. The photo is how you show it while registering a photograph as a photograph. Totally different application. All right. So we’re clear on what this is for now. Now every piece in one batch has to have been published in the same calendar year.
Miriam Schulman: And this is the part that I think I was confused about when I did do my last video, which is why you shouldn’t take legal advice from the internet. I thought you could only do it for this year, but you can actually do things in a separate registration for things published in 2025, but only 2025 goes into that application. And for 2026, it can only be published in 2026. The other thing that’s really confusing is that published date is not the same thing as creation date. And by the way, you don’t need 20. So the minimum is two. Why would you do it if you don’t have 20? Because the clock starts ticking once it’s officially published. And your rights of what you can do once you register diminish if you wait. Okay. We’re going to get into that. So all paintings published in the same year can be registered as a group. What counts as published? Do you have to sell it first? What does published mean? Yeah. All right. Here’s some comments and questions about that. So I think someone said someone could steal it while you look for a buyer. How do I register work that isn’t published? I think somebody even said, oh, I’ll sell it to myself. Don’t do that. Okay. In copyright, legalese published doesn’t mean what it might mean to you and me. It’s not the same thing as putting something on Instagram.
Miriam Schulman: It means distributing copies of the work to the public by selling, renting, lending or otherwise transferring ownership. It also covers offering the work for sale or for further distribution. So what does that mean for visual artists? The Copyright Office says that includes the original. If you sell the original painting or offer it for sale, you generally published it. What doesn’t count on its own is display. So the office gives this example a painting hanging in a commercial gallery where it’s offered for sale is published. A painting hung on a wall to be looked at is displayed, and display alone is in publication. Okay. Posting online is where everybody wants a simple rule, and there isn’t one. Don’t assume every upload counts as published. If you’re not sure the Copyright Office helpline is available, or you can ask an attorney before you file. Now let’s get to the question that I think was the most confusing. Do you have to sell it first? No. If the work isn’t published, there is a separate group option called GRUW. So group registration for unpublished works. It covers 2 to 10 unpublished works in one application, and you can also register a single work on its own. Now remember I mentioned the commenters said, oh, sell it to yourself. Don’t do that. Inventing a sale to fit a form gives you an inaccurate Application, and you don’t want to find a problem in the middle of a dispute.
Miriam Schulman: So take the route that matches what actually happened. All right. I want to hear in the comments, have you ever registered any artworks with the copyright Office? Yes or not yet. Let me know below. All right. So every question that I’m answering this episode came from your comments and comments are only half of it. I mean, artists are always sliding into my DMs and saying, hey, can I ask you one little question? By the way? I answer questions like that unless they’re from clients, but I get copyright questions. If I, you know, go see an attorney if it’s a copyright question. But most of the time I get asked things like, how do I find people who will actually buy my art? Will you look at my art? Should I raise my prices or I’m doing all the things? So why are they making more sales? And to you, this seems like a little question, but it opens up a whole conversation, and I want to answer it with integrity and not just give you a canned answer. It’s not fair to you. So I want to know what’s happening in your art business so I can give an answer that actually helps. And that’s why I do offer one on one consultations. If you’ve been curious about working with me, this is a great place to start. Go to SchulmanArt.com/consult. You’ll answer some questions about where you are in your business.
Miriam Schulman: I also inside the application, I post some different price points of what it is to work with me. Then you’ll meet with me one on one, talk through what’s getting in your way and where to focus on first. If one of my programs is a good fit for you and you want to go deeper, of course you can apply the consultation fee towards that program. So if you have that one little question and you keep turning it over in your head. Give it the attention it deserves. Go to SchulmanArt.com/consult to book your call with me today. All right, now back to your comments because this next one tripped up a lot of people. What about paintings from previous years? So you can’t copyright artwork from previous years. What about artwork? More than a quarter old. Okay, a lot of the confusion around this was totally my fault and I own it. Yes, you can register older work a previous year does not disqualify anything from PR 2D. The only rule is that everything in one batch shares the same year of first publication, and that year does not have to be this year. So if you have six paintings you first published in 2023, that’s a 2023 batch paintings published in 2024. Go in a separate 2024 batch and you don’t mix them now. The year that matters is when the work was first published, not when you painted it or created it.
Miriam Schulman: So an artwork you finish in 2019 but sold in 2024 goes in the 2024 batch. Now, the other thing that came up was the quarter. And why that got confusing is in my short slash video, I suggested that every quarter, you make it a habit to register all your published artwork within that quarter, but it can be not in the quarter. You can group everything that’s in a calendar year. The other calendar year rule is not a three month expiration date. Under copyright. There is a separate three month rule, though, and that is worth knowing about. So that is what we’re going to get into now. The three month rule doesn’t decide whether you can register. It affects what you can recover in federal court if somebody infringes. Generally, if your registration is in place before the infringement starts, you keep the option of asking for statutory damages and attorney fees for published work. There is a grace period, so you have to register within three months of first publication. And that’s why I said in my last video, hey, make it a habit of every three months registering it. And that way you keep those options even for infringement that started after publication, but before your registration. Now there are exceptions. And yeah, the case of the of the facts, facts of case matter. So that’s where an attorney is very helpful here.
Miriam Schulman: Statutory damages are an amount the law sets out. So you don’t have to prove how many dollars you lost. It’s a range of court works with it, not a check that shows up automatically. Now attorney’s fees matter because they can make the difference between a case a lawyer can take on, and a case that costs more than it’s worth. Registering late doesn’t mean you have no copyright, and it doesn’t mean you can’t recover anything, but it can mean those two options aren’t available for infringement that have has already started. Make sense now? This is where waiting until you have 20 before you register could hurt you because the countdown timer starts clicking. Say you publish three in March and you want to wait until December so you have a full batch, but then you’ve let more than a three month window pass and that closes on you. So two is a valid group. If you’re really worried about copyright, then you register that and you register that. So if you publish in March, you want to do it no later than June. Okay. Yeah. This is another expense. I hear that I heard this loud and clear. It is a cost. I’m not going to pretend $85 is nothing. Especially when you’re paying for everything else. But it is a one time application fee for that batch, not a subscription. And you don’t pay again to keep those registrations. Next year’s paintings are a new batch.
Miriam Schulman: I keep saying paintings, but it’s there’s a lot of different kinds of artwork that covers next year’s artwork, our new badge and a new fee. Now, across 20 artworks, it’s $4.25 each. This is probably more important for those of you who are in art licensing, because selling the rights to your artwork matters a lot. And you know when other people are ripping you off. Now, a few of you remember registering an unlimited number of unpublished works. You’re not imagining it. The office used to allow unpublished collections. But in March of 2019, it replaced that with GRUW, the unpublished group option that I mentioned earlier. And that’s separate from this new option for published work. If money’s tight, here’s my advice it’s business coach, not a legal role. Set the registration budget that you’re willing to do. Just like anything else. Just like you said, a budget for framing or advertising or anything else. Start with the work that earns you the most. This is why I said this matters more for artists who are selling their work as rights and licensing. So the pieces you license, the pieces that you reproduce or sell prints of. That’s a good question for an attorney to. Which ones matter for you? All right, let’s get to the next point. What’s the point if you can’t afford a lawyer? Now, someone in the comments said a lawyer asked for $5,000. A $5,000 retainer to look at their case.
Miriam Schulman: And obviously, I can’t speak to that situation. But yeah, the fear behind it is real and it’s why so many artists don’t register at all. So I want you to start by deciding what you actually want. Do you want the image taken down? Do you want to be paid? Do you want to pursue a formal claim. Those three different paths have three different price tags. Whatever you want, preserve the evidence first. Dated screenshots. The URL, the copied image. Your original files. Any messages before you accuse anybody, check whether you’ve forgotten something like a license you granted, permission you gave years ago, or a use the law allows. If the copying is happening online, most platforms have a takedown process under DMCA. You generally don’t need a registration to send a takedown notice, but a notice is a legal statement, so make sure it’s accurate. The other side can file a counter notice and takedown gets the image removed. Doesn’t necessarily get you paid. If you want to be paid, the federal court is out of reach. You can look at the Copyright Claims Board. Its part of the copyright office. It’s remote and it handles qualifying claims up to $30,000, and you don’t need an attorney to bring a claim there. You need to have at least submitted your registration application. All right. I wanted to share with you an example of how this looks like in real life.
Miriam Schulman: So Wendy Papola is a graphic designer who sold her own design on t shirts and mugs, but she found an Etsy seller selling shirts with her design on them cheaper than hers. So she filed a take down notice with Etsy. And then the seller filed a counter notice to get the listing restored. The seller’s story was that they paid somebody else for a commercial license, however, that someone else turned out to be a fraud. So she took it to the Copyright Claims Board, and the board ruled in our favor. Let’s talk about how much money she got. The seller showed that they sold one t shirt with her design one, and the profit on that shirt was $13. If all she could do was prove what she lost. That’s about what her case is worth. $13. But because she had registered, she could ask for statutory damages instead. An amount the law set. So you don’t have to prove every dollar. And the board awarded her $750, which is the minimum. Now, she did ask for $5,000. She got $750, but she didn’t pay for a lawyer. I’m telling you that on purpose, because this isn’t a jackpot story. It’s the difference between a case that’s worth $10, somebody who didn’t register in a case that she got paid something, and the seller who thought paying a stranger for a license covering them learned that no he didn’t. Okay, one more thing that matters for anyone who registers late in federal court, statutory damages depend on registering on time.
Miriam Schulman: So the board is more forgiving. It can still award statutory damages for work registered late, but it will be lower. So if you’re wondering if this artist ever neglected the public reports that I found didn’t say so. That’s exactly why you need to know the board’s limits going in. So this this I found very troubling. The other side can opt out. If they do, your case doesn’t go forward. The board generally can’t order someone to stop. It doesn’t issue injunctions. And winning is not the same thing as getting paid. If you win and they don’t pay, then you may need to go to federal court to enforce the award. The damages rules are different from federal courts, so don’t assume you’ll get the same numbers. But registration does give you more options. It doesn’t hire an enforcement team and it doesn’t guarantee you a dollar. But having some more options that matters. Copyright questions at least have rules that you can look up, and the questions artists bring me about their businesses usually don’t. So sometimes artists like to bring me very specific questions like which gallery approach or what to charge. And sometimes people ask me very huge and vague questions like, what direction should an artist like me go in? And that’s a real question and it deserves a real answer. But I want to be clear I do not coach people in the DMs.
Miriam Schulman: I don’t even coach people on social media or in the comments section. That is for my private clients. However, I do want to help. So if you want a taste of what a one on one coaching call with me is like, that’s why I offer these consultations. Go to Schulman Art dot com slash consult. You’ll answer some questions about where you are now in your business and where you’d like to go. So I know what’s really happening before we meet. Then we’ll meet one on one to talk through what’s getting in your way and where to focus on next. And if one of my programs is a good fit, you can apply your consultation fee towards that program. If what’s next for me is the question that’s keeping you up at night, that’s exactly the kind of question you bring to the consult. Again, that’s Schulman Art dot com slash consult. Okay. Let’s go back to your questions and comments. This next one flips the whole question around. What if you’re the one doing the copying? All right. If someone puts a picture on Facebook, can I draw it and sell my drawing if they haven’t published it? There’s no automatic guess. A photo being online does not make it free to use, and an unregistered photo is still protected. We talked about that. They still own the copyright. They just have limits on what they can go after.
Miriam Schulman: Unpublished does not mean public domain. Turning somebody else’s photo into a drawing or whatever it is does not give you permission either. Whether you can use it depends on a few things. You have permission. You have a license. Is the image in the public domain is an exception like fair use, supply and fair use is decided case by case. There’s no percentage of changes that can make a copy safe. This comes up in my own commission work. Sometimes clients hand me a photo with a watermark on it. I don’t paint from that and hope for the best. So the last time that happened, my assistant tracked down the source and bought the rights to use it. And I consider that part of the cost of doing business. If a client wants a portrait done of a loved one and they hand me a photo done by a professional photographer, I always insist that they get a release form signed from that photographer. And sometimes that means paying the photographer a fee to use it. Fair. Okay, now you can flip it around if you’re worried about your own images being copied. You can run a reverse image search on your key pieces. I used to subscribe to software that would do this for me on the regular. But unfortunately, the infringement wasn’t happening in the US and so I couldn’t go after it, so I stopped doing that. But that is one way you can track it.
Miriam Schulman: Registration also isn’t a lock under images. It won’t stop anyone from downloading your work or scraping it for AI. Now, whether training AI and artwork is legal is being argued in lawsuits right now, and that could be a whole separate episode. If you want me to do episodes like that, let me know in the chat. Now, this is for my friend outside the US. Gr 2D is a US registration option. It didn’t change the copyright law anywhere else. Being outside the US doesn’t mean you can’t register here. Many works with artists in other countries can be registered with the US Copyright Office. Whether it’s worth doing so depends on your situation, including where you your work cells, where you might ever need to enforce those rights. Think about the t shirt seller to the listener who asked about the UK copy, right? There is automatic and there’s no government to register with. You’re not missing a UK filing and nothing in this episode is a UK requirement. All right, let’s talk about your next steps. Don’t try to register everything tonight. Do this instead. Pick a manageable set of pieces for each one. Write down the title when you made it, when and how it was first published. If you don’t know right? Not sure. Don’t guess. Sort them by route. Publish 2D work from the same year. Goes to GRTE. Unpublished work goes towards GRUW sculpture, photography and collaborations each need a different route.
Miriam Schulman: Also check the timing before you batch. If something was published recently, don’t hold it back. Waiting for a bigger group. Because if a piece is publication, status is unclear or someone is already copied it, you’ve got to get it registered and get help before it’s too late to file. Prepare the files and follow all the official instructions. Right. You don’t send them your actual paintings. Save all your submission records and watch your email for questions from the examiner. One aside on timing, the office says that it takes about 3 to 4 months for electronic claims with digital files that don’t need any back and forth. That’s not a promise, but that’s what I read online. Listen, protecting your artwork is part of running your art business. You own your copyright the moment you make your artwork, but registration gives you options. When somebody steals your art, document what you. Make a practical next step. And don’t let fear of someone copying your work stop you from showing it. All right. We have put all of the official copyright office links from today in the show notes. And if you know an artist who’s been asking these types of questions, share this episode with them. All right, my friend, thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/SchulmanArt, on Instagram at @SchulmanArt, and of course on SchulmanArt.com
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