Abundant Artist - Art Copyrights, Copyrights for Artists

All About Copyrights - Thank you to Barron Associates P.C.- an excellent firm for copyright and trademark law consultation.

Copyrights are legal property rights, called "Intellectual Property." These rights are given by the government in order to give control to anyone who makes a creative THING. Every time technology makes it possible to create a new kind of artwork, a new right is also created. Some of the things that artists have rights for are: Books, Poetry, Magazines, Newspapers, Letters, Sound Recordings, Music, Lyrics, Manuscripts, Scripts, Web Sites, Plays, Speeches, Pantomimes, Articles, Photographs, Dramatic Works, Movies, Films, Videos, Cartoons, Drawings, Illustrations, Games, Website design, Sculptures, Architectural Works, Multimedia Creations, Recipe Instructions, Animations, Computer Graphics, Choreographic Works, Charts, Maps, Software, Databases and others. Read the rest of the article.

Copyright Resource Links

US Government Copyright Office

Copyright Law of the United States

And, if you're really, really into this stuff, here are the latest amendments!

US Government Patent and Trademark Office

Primer On The Digital Millenium Copyright Act Thank you to Barron Associates P.C.- an excellent firm for copyright and trademark law consultation.

On October 12, 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ending many months of turbulent negotiations regarding its provisions. Two weeks later, on October 28th, President Clinton signed the Act into law.

The Act is designed to implement the treaties signed in December 1996 at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference, but also contains additional provisions addressing related matters.

As was the case with the 'No Electronic Theft' Act of 1997, the bill was originally supported by the software and entertainment industries, and opposed by scientists, librarians, and academics. Read the rest of the article.

Copyright, Fair Use, and the New Borrowers - -by Herb Tam - publiched in the NYFA Interactive News -Thank you for sharing the information with artists everywhere.

Concurrent with the explosion of sophisticated methods of appropriation in visual art, music, and most other artistic genres is a mounting confusion regarding America’s fair use laws for artistic pursuits. Responding to the situation, New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice has recently released a report documenting how and when artists are protected by the country’s fair use laws.

“Usually, all I need is tracing paper and a good light. I can’t understand why I was never an Abstract Expressionist, because with my shaking hand I would have been a natural.”
-Andy Warhol

Add appropriation to the list of artmaking strategies prevalent enough to be considered canonized. Ever since Marcel Duchamp assigned a urinal to be a work of art in 1917, artists have continually challenged concepts of originality and authorship. In the process, they have internalized the use of pre-existing material, weaving it into the fabric of contemporary artmaking. Now a new generation of borrowers like Nate Lowman, Nancy Drew, Eric Doeringer, Paul Pfeiffer, and many others freely take or copy from popular culture (including art history) for a variety of expressive reasons. Appropriation has thus grown from an isolated movement associated with artists like Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince who rose to prominence in the ’80s to a paradigm of artmaking, much like the way conceptual strategies have become so engrained in current art practice. And just as photography has become the new reality in painting, so borrowing is the new creativity in artmaking in general. Read the rest of the Article.

ALL ABOUT COPYRIGHTS FOR ARTISTS