bmattock
Veteran
I am writing this because I suspect that a lot of folks are not entirely clear on what copyright is and what it is not. This applies to the US only (other countries are similar, but not identical). I am not a lawyer (IANAL), and this is not legal advice.
What is copyright? The rights to how a creative work is used, displayed, and resold.
How do you get copyright? When you create a creative work such as a painting, photograph, or writing, it is automatically copyrighted. You do not have to file any paperwork or make any declarative statement or post any notice on the piece itself if you don't want to. However, you can file for official copyright status, and you can post copyright notices on your work if you wish. http://www.copyright.gov for more information.
What does it all mean? When you sell a photograph to a publisher, for example, it means that the photograph still 'belongs' to you. You retain rights to it, you can sell it again and again - depending upon what rights you sign away in return for money, fame, good will, etc, etc. You *can* sell all rights to the piece, or you can give up only specified rights for a period of time - for example, first publication rights for North America, valid for a period of one year.
There are a lot of 'ifs' and 'buts' and 'except fors' that go along with this basic concept of ownership, which I won't go into right now unless someone wants to discuss them specifically. One exception I would like to talk about is 'Fair Use'.
Fair Use is a legal concept (not a doctrine as some call it) that says that a person can use something that they would otherwise have no rights to if it is done according to certain rules. Those rules are not set in concrete, and are subject to interpretation in different locales and by different courts. Mostly, they say that if, for example, you wanted to make a photocopy of a news story and post it on the bulletin board at work, you may do so without violating the copyright of the owner of the work. You can make a copy of a commercial software CD that you bought for your own use, but you can't upload it to the internet and share it with thousands of people. You can make a compilation CD of your favorite songs and let friends listen to it with you. Things like that. None of these things are usually seen to 'harm' the ownership rights of the authors - that is, they lose nothing by the use. It would also be impossible, for example, to review a book in a newspaper without quoting a few lines of it - and one does not have to 'buy' permission to so quote the book. A teacher may make copies of a poem for use in class without having 'bought' the rights to the poem in question.
But Fair Use is a pretty flexible concept. From time to time, it is tested in courts - that means someone gets sued, and has to defend their right to use the work in question without paying for that right. Borders of what is allowed get moved back and forth with some regularity.
There are many people who do not agree with many aspects of copyright law. They may not see why a software company has any right to stop you from giving as many copies away as you like - after all, you 'bought' the software. Same for music CDs, and now lately, movies. The concept used by the owners of such copyright, of course, is that no, you never 'owned' the right to copy or distribute those works, you owned the right to use the work in question in a specified manner, which you agreed to by purchasing the work. You didn't buy, for example, Windows XP. You bought the right to run the Windows XP operating system on one computer in your home or business.
I would ask such people to consider if this rationale were to be applied to their own works. You bust your hump creating a photo that you are very proud of. You make a large print and enter it in a contest, and WOW you win. Fame and fortune. But wait... A few months later, you see giant posters of your work adorning the walls of college dorm rooms around the country. T-shirts made with your work on them. You never licensed such use, and you are NOT getting paid for it - not even getting accredidation as author or owner of the work. You get people showing YOU your own image and remarking on how great it is - you should know, you created it - but somebody else is getting paid for it.
How would you feel about that? Wouldn't you want someone to help you enforce your ownership rights, to help you get just compensation for the use your work has been put to, for the money earned that you didn't get?
And of course, you can sue to get justice. You may get money, and that's great.
But wait a minute. Seems your work ALSO got used to advertise a political or religious cause YOU don't believe in. It sure looks like you do, based on how the photo has been twisted around and the title that has been put on it.
So you not only lost the revenue from the work, but you lost the right to control HOW the work would be used. IF you had been asked, you would never have agreed to use XYZ or ABC, because that's something YOU don't agree with.
How do you sue to get back your reputation? How do you sue to keep people from forever associating your work with some cause you actually dislike? You can't put that genie back in the bottle, my friends. You can get money, assuming there is money to be found - but your work is forever going to be associated with that which you hate. How do you feel about that?
So as you can see, copyright is not just about how to make money with your work. It recognizes that it is important for artists of all sorts to control HOW their work will be used, because that use can affect the value of the work - can undermine it or damage the reputation of the artist if used in a way he or she does not want it to be used.
With all that said, we come to the bit about the giant artwork in Millenium Park, Cloudgate. As I understand it, the creator of that work specified that certain rights were not included in the sale of the piece, including the right to publish photographs of it commercially. That would not stop Joe the Happy Snapper from taking a photo for his photo album back home, and might not stop him from publishing it on his blog (grey area), nor would it stop news agencies from using photos of it to report on the story - journalism is generally considered Fair Use. But it would stop a person from including a photo of Cloudgate in a coffee-table book sold at B. Dalton's, for example.
*** CONSIDER THIS A TOPICAL SIDE-BAR ****
*** END OF TOPICAL SIDE-BAR ***
With regard to how copyright is sometimes overused or abused to the detriment of those who otherwise think they own the right to do this or that - well, it sometimes happens. Copyright is not a static concept, the walls keep moving in and out. The only way to test theories is to try them and see if the courts will respect them when challenged.
Let's say I put a copyright restriction on my photographs that says that if anyone looks at it, they owe me a penny. And then I start suing people whom I believe have seen my work. Well, I'm guessing I'll probably lose bigtime, but we will have established the notion that one can look at a photograph without violating copyright law. That's a silly example, granted, but intended to illustrate the point I'm trying to make.
One can go as far as one wants to go with regard to establishing the manner in which their work can be used and what rights are actually being transferred to a purchaser. If everyone respects those demands, then it is as good as having the law behind you. If people violate those demands, you have recourse to the court system, which may or may not agree that you ever had the right to impose such requirements in the first place.
Make sense?
I hope this helps. If it does not, at least look at http://www.copyright.gov for information about US Copyright law. It affects us all, and it sometimes dismays me as a photographer to hear other photographers urging that the copyright demands of other types of artists be disregarded as 'rediculous'. We're all in this together.
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
What is copyright? The rights to how a creative work is used, displayed, and resold.
How do you get copyright? When you create a creative work such as a painting, photograph, or writing, it is automatically copyrighted. You do not have to file any paperwork or make any declarative statement or post any notice on the piece itself if you don't want to. However, you can file for official copyright status, and you can post copyright notices on your work if you wish. http://www.copyright.gov for more information.
What does it all mean? When you sell a photograph to a publisher, for example, it means that the photograph still 'belongs' to you. You retain rights to it, you can sell it again and again - depending upon what rights you sign away in return for money, fame, good will, etc, etc. You *can* sell all rights to the piece, or you can give up only specified rights for a period of time - for example, first publication rights for North America, valid for a period of one year.
There are a lot of 'ifs' and 'buts' and 'except fors' that go along with this basic concept of ownership, which I won't go into right now unless someone wants to discuss them specifically. One exception I would like to talk about is 'Fair Use'.
Fair Use is a legal concept (not a doctrine as some call it) that says that a person can use something that they would otherwise have no rights to if it is done according to certain rules. Those rules are not set in concrete, and are subject to interpretation in different locales and by different courts. Mostly, they say that if, for example, you wanted to make a photocopy of a news story and post it on the bulletin board at work, you may do so without violating the copyright of the owner of the work. You can make a copy of a commercial software CD that you bought for your own use, but you can't upload it to the internet and share it with thousands of people. You can make a compilation CD of your favorite songs and let friends listen to it with you. Things like that. None of these things are usually seen to 'harm' the ownership rights of the authors - that is, they lose nothing by the use. It would also be impossible, for example, to review a book in a newspaper without quoting a few lines of it - and one does not have to 'buy' permission to so quote the book. A teacher may make copies of a poem for use in class without having 'bought' the rights to the poem in question.
But Fair Use is a pretty flexible concept. From time to time, it is tested in courts - that means someone gets sued, and has to defend their right to use the work in question without paying for that right. Borders of what is allowed get moved back and forth with some regularity.
There are many people who do not agree with many aspects of copyright law. They may not see why a software company has any right to stop you from giving as many copies away as you like - after all, you 'bought' the software. Same for music CDs, and now lately, movies. The concept used by the owners of such copyright, of course, is that no, you never 'owned' the right to copy or distribute those works, you owned the right to use the work in question in a specified manner, which you agreed to by purchasing the work. You didn't buy, for example, Windows XP. You bought the right to run the Windows XP operating system on one computer in your home or business.
I would ask such people to consider if this rationale were to be applied to their own works. You bust your hump creating a photo that you are very proud of. You make a large print and enter it in a contest, and WOW you win. Fame and fortune. But wait... A few months later, you see giant posters of your work adorning the walls of college dorm rooms around the country. T-shirts made with your work on them. You never licensed such use, and you are NOT getting paid for it - not even getting accredidation as author or owner of the work. You get people showing YOU your own image and remarking on how great it is - you should know, you created it - but somebody else is getting paid for it.
How would you feel about that? Wouldn't you want someone to help you enforce your ownership rights, to help you get just compensation for the use your work has been put to, for the money earned that you didn't get?
And of course, you can sue to get justice. You may get money, and that's great.
But wait a minute. Seems your work ALSO got used to advertise a political or religious cause YOU don't believe in. It sure looks like you do, based on how the photo has been twisted around and the title that has been put on it.
So you not only lost the revenue from the work, but you lost the right to control HOW the work would be used. IF you had been asked, you would never have agreed to use XYZ or ABC, because that's something YOU don't agree with.
How do you sue to get back your reputation? How do you sue to keep people from forever associating your work with some cause you actually dislike? You can't put that genie back in the bottle, my friends. You can get money, assuming there is money to be found - but your work is forever going to be associated with that which you hate. How do you feel about that?
So as you can see, copyright is not just about how to make money with your work. It recognizes that it is important for artists of all sorts to control HOW their work will be used, because that use can affect the value of the work - can undermine it or damage the reputation of the artist if used in a way he or she does not want it to be used.
With all that said, we come to the bit about the giant artwork in Millenium Park, Cloudgate. As I understand it, the creator of that work specified that certain rights were not included in the sale of the piece, including the right to publish photographs of it commercially. That would not stop Joe the Happy Snapper from taking a photo for his photo album back home, and might not stop him from publishing it on his blog (grey area), nor would it stop news agencies from using photos of it to report on the story - journalism is generally considered Fair Use. But it would stop a person from including a photo of Cloudgate in a coffee-table book sold at B. Dalton's, for example.
*** CONSIDER THIS A TOPICAL SIDE-BAR ****
*** END OF TOPICAL SIDE-BAR ***
With regard to how copyright is sometimes overused or abused to the detriment of those who otherwise think they own the right to do this or that - well, it sometimes happens. Copyright is not a static concept, the walls keep moving in and out. The only way to test theories is to try them and see if the courts will respect them when challenged.
Let's say I put a copyright restriction on my photographs that says that if anyone looks at it, they owe me a penny. And then I start suing people whom I believe have seen my work. Well, I'm guessing I'll probably lose bigtime, but we will have established the notion that one can look at a photograph without violating copyright law. That's a silly example, granted, but intended to illustrate the point I'm trying to make.
One can go as far as one wants to go with regard to establishing the manner in which their work can be used and what rights are actually being transferred to a purchaser. If everyone respects those demands, then it is as good as having the law behind you. If people violate those demands, you have recourse to the court system, which may or may not agree that you ever had the right to impose such requirements in the first place.
Make sense?
I hope this helps. If it does not, at least look at http://www.copyright.gov for information about US Copyright law. It affects us all, and it sometimes dismays me as a photographer to hear other photographers urging that the copyright demands of other types of artists be disregarded as 'rediculous'. We're all in this together.
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
