Visual Copyright Article
Your Rights as a Visual Artist
Who owns the copyright to your artwork?
You do!
Assuming that you did the work for your own purposes, the minute you create the work, you own the copyright.
But...
If you make a painting and then sell it to someone, the painting belongs to them but the copyright for the painting belongs to you unless you made other arrangements with the customer.
If you do a painting for an employer or client who pays you to create the work, this is called "work for hire" and the work and the copyright belongs to them.
If you do a painting on a commission basis for a client, then both the work and the copyright belong to the client unless some other arrangement was made.
If you make some paintings and then permit a company to publish a commercial calendar using your paintings, this is called licensing and the original paintings and the copyright most likely belongs to you, although it depends on the agreement you signed with the publishing company.
Rights 101 for visual artists, illustrators, photographers and designers
When you create a piece of art, photography or design you have the right to reproduce the artwork, copy it, display it in public and to benefit economically from it. You also have the right to prevent someone else who may have copied your image from using it.
If you wish, you may permit others to use your images by granting them a license, which is a wirtten agreement which details how the client may use your image, for how long, in what manner, and how much the client will pay for the use of the image.
Occasionally artists give up all rights to their images, voluntarily place their artwork into the public domain. Once an artist does this, that artist is no longer permitted to benefit eonomically from the work so gving up rights to your artwork is usually not a good idea, especially when you have the right to allow anyone to freely use your work with your permission.
Placing work into the public domain is often done in the field of software development. Computer programmers also create open source software and allow everyone free access to their code and programs. The free culture movement started with the practices of computer programers who gave away their code.
Artists may also assign rights to someone else in return for financial compensation. Once they have done this, the rights holder takes complete control over the artwork and can profit from it freely.
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Disclaimer
These pages are for educational purposes only. This site offers a combination of fact, anecdotal information and editorial opinion of the writer, none of which should be construed as legal advice. If you require legal assistance on any aspect of copyright law, please contact a lawyer.