[Woodcarver] Copyrights

[Ivan Whillock]

MessageTo understand copyrights, approach them from the artist's point of view.  You, the artist, write a poem, paint a picture, take a photograph, make a carving. It is automatically copyrighted i.e. you have total ownership of it.   The object and all rights associated with it belong to you.  Without your permission the public has no rights to it at all, any more than they can drive off with your car or enter your house to watch your TV.  You can choose what you want to do with it or how many of the rights surrounding it you wish to sell or give away.  

You can display your work or publish it, squirrel it away, or charge a fee for the use of it.  The fact that you put it on display does not mean that the public has the right to steal it. If you write a story, you can specify the rights you wish to sell, for example, first North American rights, means that a publisher can use it one time and then the rights go back to you.  

If you write a book and want to make some money from it, you can specify in the copyright notice the limitations you are putting on the purchase of the book.  Most of the time the copyright notice, through the legal gobbledegook, prohibits any activity that would interfere with your right to profit from your work.

The laws protect you, the originator of the work, and give you legal recourse in case somebody tries to rip you off by copying it, reproducing it, or pirating it.  Intellectual or artistic property is as much your property as your car, home, and TV set.  People who try to use it without your permission either don't understand your rights or don't respect them.  
Most of the time it's because they don't understand the significance of copyrights for you the artist--that they are necessary to preserve your right to make a living from your creations.  Most people are honest and would not knowingly rip you off, but intellectual property is not associated with a person's ownership the same way a car or a house is, and people don't always realize that what they are doing is stealing  because from their point of view it seems so harmless--like taking a roll of tape home from the office.

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