Photographer Jack Reznicki first raised this information to my attention, and this is a serious issue for photographers in the US. The US Copyright Office is proposing to raise the copyright registration fee to $100, up from $55, which was recently raised from $35 (and the number of unpublished images registered under one application was reduced from virtually unlimited to 750 images).
This is an amount that impedes many people from getting copyright registration, and without registration, there is essentially no copyright protection.
I want to point out: Copyright protection and enforcement by government is a Constitutional requirement. It's right there in Article 1 of the Constitution, right beside establishment of the US Navy. While the requirement to register makes practical sense for enforcement, requiring citizens to pay any money at all is essentially unconstitutional on its face, like paying a poll tax to vote.
Copyright registration ought to be free, as it is in most other countries that are Berne Convention signatories. But certainly raising registration to $100 has a chilling effect on small business people exactly like charging people $100 to vote.
Written comments must be received by the Copyright office no later than July 23, 2018, at 11:59 p.m. eastern time. At the web page announcing the fee change there is a link labeled "May 24, 2018 - Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" to see the actual Federal Register document with full background on the proposal.
Here is the web page:
https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/feestudy2018/
