I just had lunch with two old friends from grade school. And, I mean old.
One of them is an attorney and now I'm sick and my head is spinning.....
Let one of those idiots start talking and it really gets crazy.
Maya, in the matter of an automatic copyright. It's not as if you registered a copyright of a particular piece, but no matter what it is, a piece of original art is automatically protected to some degree. You don't see original painting by artists that paint in traditionnal mediums like oils or acrylics in an art gallery, where the artist dipped his brush back in the paint after he signed his name and then added a little c inside of a circle. I have been painting in oils for over 40 years and not one of my originals has a © on it. My mother lived until she was 76 years old, and painted, and was a teacher of painting for more than 60 years. I have almost all of here work in storage and there ain't a © on a piece. But, if someone took a photograph of any one of those paintings and tried to sell it, they are protected as original works of art under the copyright laws. Whether that means it is copyrighted or not I don't know. I just know it is protected under those laws. Your work falls under the same protection.
This whole © business has really only become an issue since the mass communications and electronic media has exploded into what it is today. Technology is such that anything can be copied and distributed worldwide in seconds.
As I said, I've been a traditional artist most all of my life, and I have worked in the printing/advertising business for over 35 years. However, this computer generated form of art is brand spanking new to me. I've only been fooling around with it for a matter of months. I'm just learning and it's still really new to me. I started slapping a © on things the day I built my first webpage and now it seems you need to put it on everything.
As crazy as this whole © thing is in the digital world, I have a question for Ramwolff. Now that you've got your signature with a © all worked out, do you think, maybe, because you did your signature digitally you should put a second © after the signature to protect it? Who know's, someone might come along and copy you signature and try and use it. Ha Ha!!!!
Seriously, that's how crazy this is. I have been around graphic artist, because of my business, all of my life and I've never seen the whole © matter become such an issue with what appears to be so much fear attached to it.
I can totally understand the traditional concern of any arist, before this digital age existed, of someone flat out copying their work. Like with a camera or a copy machine or something along those lines. To me that is stealing someone else's work physically, and it has to be controlled.
But when it comes to the matter of who came up with this or that first gets a little rediculous to me. I mean, if you keep carrying this one step further and you kept going further back in time it would come down to the world having about 3 or 4 original works of art hanging in some museum somewhere and that would be it. Artwork has been copied in style, look and content from the first cave drawings. It is how art is transfered down from one generation to another.
If any of you went to a traditional art school, you will remember one of the first things you did your very first year was to hike off the the local art museum and do your original copy of a piece of work hanging on a wall. At least that's the way it was done in first year art history at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. And that ain't no little art school.
So, I posed all of these questions to the attorney I had lunch with and got his opinion. I won't go into all of his legal ramblings, I will simply boil it down to this.
If you are afraid that someone else is going to copy your work in any manner.....do not publish your work. It is done everyday, and in more cases than not, in perfectly leagal ways.
There is and instant graemilin on this site of a smiley face......and that is a copyrighted image! The gentleman that first drew a round circle in black with a yellow center and two black eyes and a black upturned mouth to form a smile, first drew that image in his den and he published it and copyrighted it in either 1968 or 1969. I'd have to check for the exact date. He died a few years ago, but his copyright remains for 70 years after his death. Where is the notice on this site, or anywhere else that I see that image, a thousand times a day, stating that it is a derivative work of a copyrighted work?
Am I missing something or do I just not understand something correctly? The smiley face is exactly what I'm talking about. You see them everyday and although they are not exact physical copies of the original they are look alikes, and I know for a fact it is a copyrighted image.
How is that any different for someone doing a completely original work of art that looks exactly like someone else's?
This is why I'm so confused over this.
The hard fact is, there isn't much anyone can do if someone wants to paint a painting exactly like one you have done except complain, and if you have enough money to pursue it in court, sue for infringement and take the gamble a judge is going to see it your way. If the second artist can come into court and show he has all his original sketches and his original finished painting, he stands just as good a chance to win his case as the plaintiff.
Now my head hurts and I have to go lay down.
I'm just way too confused by all of this,
Jack
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks