Copyright my artwork?

[Celtic_Emperor]

Copyrighting my artwork

For some time now I've been thinking of perhaps, in the future, copyrighting my artwork. I have seen and know of artists both great and small that have their artwork copyrighted. I was hoping to eventually do the same.

Now, I do have a couple questions. First and foremost, can fanart be copyrighted? Scamwich for example has his work copyrighted and yet some of his pictures are or could be considered fanart. So I am a little confused, or rather, uncertain about this.

Second question, and certainly the most technical of the two, what is the process by which I can go about to get copyright status for my works over the internet (and elsewhere for that matter)?

It would also help if artists here who already have their work copyrighted can tell me about it. This is the first time in my life I've ever seriously considered copyrighting my artwork. Any useful help and/or information would be appriciated.

Thank you very much. 🙂


- Damien


PS: This is my 300th post. Yay for me. ^__^

 

[morgandavis]

not hardly

yeah, the overall composition might be something of your own creation

but fanart is NOT protected by fair use

meaning, just because you do fanart, you aren't as protected from things like injunctions or reprimands or even lawsuits for fanart or fanfiction

the content of the fanart still ultimately belongs to its respective creator, and fanart/fiction can construed as copyright infringement/theft of intellectual property/what have you

any attempts to copyright fanart will be taken as theft, and the owner of the copyright does have right to preclude fanart/fiction creation

the handling of fanart is up to the original creator of regarded content and no person may claim any right or jurisdiction over it

in other words, do fanart at your own risk

people should feel fortunate that most companies or licensees don't seem to give too much crap about fanart

on the other hand, parodies are protected by fair use, and that is how weird al is able to get away without lawsuits

see the library of congress for more details--see fair use; copyright infringement

---

edit:
when you do see people having copyright text on their artwork, it doesn't mean they actually went out and signed for and bought a copyright; they just put that there for the hell of it. that doesn't mean a work isn't copyrighted because afterall, a work is copyrighted automatically at the time of its creation, but just putting "copyright so so 1999" does not make it an official legal document. plus, i'd assume it'd be pretty damn hard to prove that it belongs to so-so person without the paperwork

 

[MTJpub]

Here is a few links to info you might find helpful...

AN ARTICLE THAT DISCUSSES COPYRIGHT & USENET -
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

ANOTHER GREAT ARTICLE ON COPYRIGHT
http://www.whatiscopyright.org/

A RESOURCE ON PIRACY & INFRINGEMENT
http://www.authorslawyer.com/c-pir0.shtml

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

@ morgandavis-

Thank you for clearing that up. I did suspect and knew pretty much that people can and have lied about having copyrighted work when in fact they don't really have it. I don't want to be like them however. Even though what they have done may trick people, I'd rather have the legal rights to back me up in case anyone were to call me on it by acting against a working copyright that I might have.

As far as the fanart thing, I also figured someone would respond the way you did. But the reason I asked just to make sure was because, infact, fanart is a re-creation of an officially owned original character in most cases. I, nor anyone could claim to have the rights to such elements, and thus, as you said in a round about way, we could find ourselves doing something illegal.

While the risk seems to be low, it is still a risk, and I wouldn't want to act against an original creator in any way, shape, or form anyways. Fanart is just that. Fanart. Its somewhat of a combination of a person's tribute and a personal creation. Its too bad its flawed in the sense that you can't have it both ways. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would want to have even their fanart safe. Its not as if I'm saying I own the characters, but rather the situation as it appears on paper as a picture. Its too bad some law doesn't exist to gap the bridge, so to speak. The original artists are due all the respect, rights, and recognition they can get, and I support that very much so. I only wish it were possible to protect original ideas using non-original characters also. For my regular, original artwork, this isn't a problem however. And thats good.

Thank you for some insight, and for the reassurance I needed. 🙂


@MTJpub-

Thank you for the links, I will review the pages they lead to thoroughly. I hope you didn't go to any trouble to get them. Thanks again. 🙂


- Damien

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

" Fair Use.

Fair use or fair practice is utilization of a portion of a copyrighted work "as is" for purposes of parody, news reporting, research and education about such copyrighted work without the permission of the author. Use of copyrighted works, or portions thereof, for any other purpose is not deemed fair use, so be careful! That includes copying text or scanning pictures from postcards, magazines, books or any other work. Scanning a photo of the Amazon Forest printed in National Geographic and using it without permission on your personal web site about your family trip to South America will most likely not be considered as fair use. However, if you republished the photo on your site to comment on the photo as it was published in National Geographic, this would most likely be considered fair use. You still have to credit your source by naming the author of the work on the same page. In any event, it is always safer to take the time and effort to contact the owner and request permission to use the owner's work, and more likely than not the owner will be very appreciative and give you a favorable response.

Many think that one may take someone else's work, whether it be writings, graphic images, midis and the like and use it in an "educational" work without obtaining the author's permission or giving credit because it is "fair use". When you wrote a term paper in school, didn't you credit your sources? Even if you paraphrased the author's original words, or if you feel that you don't need the author's permission because it falls in this vague concept of fair use you must credit your source's hard work by naming your source as a reference. This is a requirement under copyright legislation. If not, you'd be committing plagiarism."


I understood this well, but could I get another person's break down of this? Morgandavis perhaps again? I'd appriciate it, if you want to. Hearing, or rather seeing another person's break down of "fair use" would be reassuring and even interesting. I'd like to have as broad an opinion or definition of "fair use" as I could, and therefore I need your help, if your willing. 🙂

Here, lets use me as an example. Lets say I did my usual thing and I drew a common japanese animation character being tickled or the character is barefoot, right? Does that count as "fair use"? And would it be ok if I were to copyright such pictures of mine (as Scamwich has) as long as I said that the actual character(s) are the property of so and so (something even he hasn't done to my knowledge)?

Would this work for example?- Copyright 2003 Damien Jones. Original character(s) are property of Ken Akamatsu (so on, so forth). All rights reserved.

I'd like more clarity on this, if I can get it. Thank you for any help or insight anyone here could offer or give. I really would appriciate it, and already appriciate the help I've recieved thus far. 🙂


- Damien

 

[morgandavis]

Here, lets use me as an example. Lets say I did my usual thing and I drew a common japanese animation character being tickled or the character is barefoot, right? Does that count as "fair use"? And would it be ok if I were to copyright such pictures of mine (as Scamwich has) as long as I said that the actual character(s) are the property of so and so (something even he hasn't done to my knowledge)?

Would this work for example?- Copyright 2003 Damien Jones. Original character(s) are property of Ken Akamatsu (so on, so forth). All rights reserved.

as far as i know, i doubt it

the way i am seeing this, and this is not necessarily what i agree with but rather the way i believe things are, is that this example and idea in general is on the same level as free advertising

free advertising can be a great thing really, and so people would agree to that and take that concept for granted (and then there are those who lie about it just so they can cheat off and claim "fair use", the deceptive jerks)

but it is not necessarily the best venue (nor is it necessarily considered fair use still)

especially with fan art and and fan fiction in mind

the case with this is the possibility of "misrepresentation" which may or may not be detrimental (or helpful) to the commercial value of regarded product(s)

for safety's sake, copyright laws protect against misrepresentation in cases where damage might occur

even if it is acknowledged that the material belongs to so-so other person, there are no actual given privileges to copyright material like that regardless of credits

on the other hand, there is the situation of copyrighting the composition itself and ignoring that it has a copyrighted character in there. this is a fairly dubious situation but, i'm sure this is a case of infringement as well. it still advertises the character, and in your case it might advertise the character in a rather undesireably compromising position, and presumably uses character without original author's permission

again, the original creator is the primary person who has most jurisdiction over how own intellectual property is handled

the best one can do is not do fan art at all and just use an original character that's similar-looking, as that would probably fall under parody (which IS fair use!) or something or other

now that case with the national geographic photo, i don't believe it is true that one can reprint a photo just like that for the sake of commenting on it. a photo is still technically under ownership of the author, and whether it is creditted or not, it can still be acknowledged as theft, and of course laziness. commenting on a photo also isn't exactly academic, either, and it is assumed that 1) it is not necessary to use photos to delineate a point about a place or landscape when a thousand (of your own) words will do just fine, 2) one should take his own photos, lazy jerk 3) the person who "borrows" said photo/artwork might misinterpret the intention of the photograph or painting, and therefore possibly damage the anal-retentive drug-induced photographer's/painter's reputation

anyway, this is a very different situation from, say, writing a term paper, which is written for the sake of educational purpose rather than critiquing a photo, plus a term paper does not use any images to begin with, unless you have one of those courses that lets you use bar graphs or some such to make it look like your paper is 10 pages bigger than it really is

basically speaking, you can't claim fair use on something like this, because that is not true.

fair use is like, when you're comparing similar products (in an honest manner)--fair use deals with fair representation of products such as pinesol versus lysol or whatever, where everything has to be objective and there is little to no room for personal perspectives, unlike the above scenario where commenting on a photo is subject to mass interpretation. this is the case with fan art and fan fiction as well

what it all comes down to is of course misrepresentation as i said up above. it is like taxation without representation! ok not really

this is why companies like to get asked for permission before someone advertises them or something

i still do fan art (occasionally) and timestamp and credit the art piece to myself and all that, but that's about it

i hope i've cleared it all up for you now, and don't mean to discourage fan art or fics (however horrible the authors may make them) because i love fan art and fics. i just don't really care for self-righteous hogwash when it comes down to copyrighting that stuff
and of course, i don't want anyone having misconceptions about
that stuff either

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Well then, thats too bad. And its sad to know so many artists are claiming copyright when they don't have the right to. I look up to Scamwich is several ways, and even hes doing something wrong..this really isn't encouraging. And while I know your intent was to help me, explaining only made it worse. But I think you anyways, for your help.

I could create my own characters, but that would take time, and draw me away from what I'm currently doing with my artwork and ruin all of my planned and future ideas.

Then again, I could continue with what I'm doing, and just trust in the community to not copy, distribute or do whatever with my art. Most of the time it works and I'm grateful, but recently there have been issues where other sites have taken my work and placed it on theirs without credit, a link, or even knowing where the picture came from or who the artist was.

To be honest, that angers me as I know it could and probably will happen again in the future. Because its VERY typical. Some sites wish to monopolize and use the work of artists as a medium to further themselves and establish an archive they can boast. And they wouldn't have cared where the material came from, or how the artists feel about it. Its like the artists are unwillingly and sometimes unknowingly feeding a war machine in a sense, so other sites can compete with other sites based on content, which is not original at all. All thats really needed are the original sites from the original artists. Theres no need to expand beyond that. Even though some people might have a problem with me saying this, and you can feel free to call me on it in private (PM) if you want, groups or sites that exist only to take non-original material (basically anything not created by ones self), mass it together, and use it as a means to traffic users and potential members to that site is a disservice to the artists who work hard to get what members they have. We honestly, legitimately earn our members, and any respects that come along with it. People that just mass-produce a collection of overly redundant material are just making it more complicated then it has to be, are watering down the community further with pictures everyone has and everyone has already seen many times, and problems like these won't go away or dimimish.

I guess thats one of the reasons I wanted a copyright for my material. So that it might discourage anyone from just being grabby with my work, and actually respect my wishes. I'd hate to have to go to this trouble to make that happen, but its the only way I could feel secure about it and relax in knowing I'm safer then I would be without a copyright. I know who I can trust, but there are so many I don't know about. And in trying to take a professional perspective with this, isn't it my right anyways and the right of others to protect their works? Whether that be art, poetry, or fan fiction? It certainly doesn't matter how ameteur it is. Art is art, and people are intitled to the same protective services available.

I guess to someone that does none of these things, it may seem irrelevant, or even pety.

I don't know...I've only been here for a while, and I've already had 4 negative experiences. Maybe I was naive in thinking a copyright would stop it now. Its like I'm outnumbered, and an easy target. It frustrates me that its just "point and click" and "save as" with people. Theres little to no respect anymore for anyone. People don't consider anything when looking at pictures anymore. Its like its a default action to take artwork without asking. Just because theres no one to police them, they feel they can do whatever they want. And it makes people like me, that want to protect themselves, look like overzealous individuals that are taking it too far. And the only reason it seems that way is because alot of people figure "whats the use?", and just give up trying to defend themselves and give in to the situation. People expect me and others to do nothing it seems, so when they get a reaction they don't like or one their not used to, its like I'm viewed crazy or something, when in fact, what I'm doing is perfectly normal.


- Damien