Legalese, Copyrights, and ART

[Allan_ecker]

You get a lot of amateur legalese in comics and art in general on the web these days.

Even on my site.

That reminds me, I need to completely replace that whole paragraph.

I'm beginning to realize that I myself do not really understand copyright law, at least not to the degree I'd need to to write "correct" legalese concerning my work.

And I don't even know for certain if it's necessary. When one creates a work of art, one OWNS that work. Heavan high and hell deep. Unless one explicitly signs one's rights away. (Which is often done.) But...

What do the courts say on that? Do they say anything? Any lawyers in the house?

[Randyg]

And I don't even know for certain if it's necessary. When one creates a work of art, one OWNS that work. Heavan high and hell deep. Unless one explicitly signs one's rights away. (Which is often done.) But...

Seeing as disney still claims ownership of mickey mouse, and the mpaa still threatens to sue people for having copies of the original casablanca, I'd say you're right there...

The problem is the difference between the spirit of the law, and what a back-stabber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lawyer can convince a judge to believe. And, of course, our current legal system (not to mention the rest of the government) is so totally corrupt, it probably doesn't even matter what the law says. But I'm not in the mood for a political rant, so I'll spare everyone it.



--Randy

[Zavion]

When you invent a character you own the rights to it as soon as you invent it, legally. But for aguement's sake you should copywrite your work because the first seconds someone feels they can make a buck off of it, and if you don't have many documentations of it to prove you made it first, well then you're kinda SOL. It'll become a battle of word over word and those are hard to win. Also, anything you put on the internet is going to get stolen. That's the sad end of it. There isn't anything really stopping people from stealing art online. Selling it's a little harder as that involves off the internet action and that's usually where legal muscle can work its way in. In effect, don't post anything online that you wouldn't want to see in a google image search under a different name. Cause if it's good, it'll be there. Expecially if it's a fan art of something (like a show or game), and more so if it's erotic art. (These two stack too. Erotic fan art is almost garuntted to be stolen, no matter how bad or good it is). See, it's easy to get legal action on your side if you're the artist who did it, tht's not the problem, it's hard to know who actually took your stuff (cause it's not like they are gonna give credit to you.)