I dont know where to begin or if it costs money. I post my images online sometimes and want them to be protected.

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go to http://copyright.gov ... they explain everything. I send in a dvd with the images I wish to copyright.

foggy_id is right ... until you can do that, you can put your copyright notice on your EXIF data on each file If you have a Nikon DSLR, you can put the following statement in the Image Comment portion of the camera's menu. "(C) 2008, Your Name, Your phone number" Using Photoshops "Bridge", you can append your XMP files with the copyright notice, your contact information, the clients (or subjects) and any key words. In Bridge, you can to this in bulk to hundreds of images. Then burn them to a CD and send them with your Copyright form and fee to the copyright office.

All of your images are already technically copyrighted, but just not registered. You realize that registering for a copyright will not prevent someone from stealing your images all by itself. (There are other things to do that I don't understand myself.) The thing about registering them is that it makes it easier to prove that they are yours when you end up suing someone for stealing your work. You might ask another question for suggestions about how to keep people from stealing your work. One is to stick to small, low resolution images, but that sometimes defeats the purpose of placing your images online. Another that I would like to know about is the infamous spaceball...

Depending on how you upload your pics, if you are doing a web page, then there is a code that you can add to disable the right click and save feature. That would stop people from taking them. Go to the computer section and ask for the code. Sorry I don't have. The other thing you can do is add a watermark to your images. People can still take, but you keep the credit.