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So Just what is a Copyright?

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States(title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.§

Copyright is actually included as a right in the US Constitution: Article I, Section 8, Clause 8

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The owner of a copyright is the only one who can legally:

• Reproduce the work
• Make Derivative Works
• Sell or otherwise distribute copies
• Display the work publicly

Who can obtain a Copyright to a particular work?

Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.§

That means the instant you press that shutter button the Copyright instantly becomes your property unless a few special circumstances are in effect. This has been true for any work created after March of 1989. The exemptions mainly involve working for someone else where your primary job is to take photographs or if you sign a contract before the images are created that gives someone else the right to them. You can license your rights to some of your work either in full or for certain limited usage. A Copyright lasts for the length of the authors life plus 70 years at this time.

I noted the reasons why this right is essentially unenforceable for the average person in the first post on this subject. You can get much greater protection by registering your copyright with the US Copyright Office. Doing this gives you:

• A public record of the copyright
• It is required before you can sue someone for infringement
• If you register within 90 days after publication of the work, you may recover legal fees and the higher damage levels mentioned in the DMCA post are in effect

The downside is that you have to do this every 90 days and it will cost you $45 every time you do it. $180/year, and again this means to me that it makes little sense unless you are making or expect to be making money from your work sometime in the future. You can do the registration either via mail or using the new planned online system. That may be slightly cheaper. The US Copyright Office has a lot of very readable information on this process and has answers for just about any question that you could think about asking. It is a very well done site and you should read some of their material for a better understanding of the process.

As we all have seen from some recent high profile shenanigans copyright law can get very complicated and this is one area where you seriously need a specialized attorney if you get involved in the legal system. They call themselves IP or Intellectual Property attorneys. For more info on that see the PhotoAttorney blog in the sidebar.

Fair Use

So just what is Fair Use? It is not a right, it is a legal defense that someone being sued for infringement may make to the judge. It basically allows people to use a portion of someones work for eductional or editorial use. But it cannot cause the owner of the copyright to lose an opportunity to generate income from his work. There are various legal tests that the judge will apply, but basically it is anything that a judge says it is.  Wikipedia has a very long article on this issue that you may want to read.

Next up is the Orphan Works act that at the time of this writing has not been passed yet. But it is something that we need to prepare for in advance since there are very powerful interests pushing for its passage.

This series started with this post

§ From the Copyright Office’s publications