Copyright laws explained for artists in a clean, easy to understand way. In this video I am going to briefly explain artist copyrights artists, fan art and some of the rules and commonalities around the practice, official registration and when that may be beneficial, watermarks, and a brief overview of licensing agreements. I hope to make this information clear and easy for you to understand. These are my hot takes on copyright laws from my own independent research into the subject. If you need any further explanation, please do your own independent research or seek advice from a legal professional.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, nor can I offer you legal advice. This video is intended for informative and entertainment purposes only. If you have legal questions or need professional legal advice, seek a lawyer who is local to your area.
"Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis and today I'm going to go over some common copyright laws that apply to artists. Before we even get started into this, let me give you a full disclaimer that I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and if you need legal advice or have any questions, I strongly urge you to contact a lawyer in your local area. So these laws apply also the United States because that is where I am based. So if you're in a different country the rules for you and the laws regarding copyrights for you might be different. Again, I'm not a lawyer so I am not entirely sure. So this is my perspective on things and what I have found from researching and watching a bunch of different videos and reading a bunch of different articles. I'm going to give you the quick and dirty for those who might be confused a little bit about what copyright is and how fan art works and licensing and watermarks. So let's get into it.
So as an artist, copyright is the right to copy. It's being allowed to distribute your work, being allowed to sell your work, copy your work, make derivatives of your work; and when you create a piece of art, that artwork is automatically copyrighted in the United States. you don't have to take it anywhere, and you don't have to do anything extra to it, it's automatically copyrighted the moment you make it.
Now, you can register your artwork, and if you are someone who has a huge following, or it's very likely that your artwork is going to be stolen or reproduced in a way that would make people a lot of money (because people are really only going to steal your artwork if it has the potential to make them a lot of money) then it might be beneficial to you to register your artwork as well. In addition to the copyright that it already comes with. This registration you can do at copyright.gov , and basically it's going to help you in any kind of legal situation that you might get in, it will help you prove that you created that work and also provide a timestamp as to when you created that work. So, most people don't really need to do this. If you're unsure, again, contact a lawyer and talk to them about it, and see what situation would best fit your specific needs.
So, let's get into fan art. Because a lot of people make fan art, and some of them think "oh, this isn't legal", and some of them think "oh, this is fine", and some people think "it's not fine, but nobody's gonna know". So first off, Fan art is legal, sort of, but also it's not. It really depends on what you're doing with it. If you're just making it in your house for you, yeah that's fine. Like if you're going to paint a trademarked logo or something on your wall, or on your own coffee mug that you're not going to share with the world, whatever. But, as soon as you start making money off of your fan art, that is when it becomes a problem, and it can even become a problem before you start making money. If you're distributing it for free even, that can be a problem because your distribution of that work that's someone else's work for free technically takes away from the income that they could have made off their work. So just because you're not making an income, if you're distributing work that is trademarked or copyrighted, it's still technically illegal.
Now a lot of what this is going to come down to is the individual company or brand. Because of course, most companies and brands don't want to sue their fans, and in a lot of situations some companies and brands find fan art favorable. Now just because they don't want to sue you, and that they don't, does not mean that they don't have the legal right to. So just because today they're not suing you, doesn't mean that three years from now they can't decide to change their mind and sue you. That is something that they are always going to have in their pocket if you're making fan art like that and you're using other people's work, other people's ideas, or trademarks.
Now I suggest that you just don't make it honestly, it's too risky. That's a personal opinion for me. I'm gonna stay away from it, but if you're making it, at least understand the companies that have the trademarks and how they treat their fans and what the history is. At the very least understand that. Know that it's technically illegal, but understand the relationship that each of those brands has with their fans, and that's the least you can do. And honestly, don't try to make money off of it, because that, really that's just wrong. That's technically stealing, like not even technically, that is stealing.
So a lot of people go into fair use for fan art, and this comes back to what I said about like if you just wanna do it for you, literally just for you; you're not distributing it, you're not posting it online, you're just doing it in your home to increase your own artistic ability. You have a sketchbook where you like to draw certain superheroes that have trademarks on them. That's fine, that's fair use. You can do that, as long as you're not distributing it. But like I said, when you distribute it, even if you're giving it away for free, technically still in violation. So just be sure that you understand the brands that you are... "taking inspiration from".
So the next quick topic I want to go over is watermarks. What is a watermark? Why do you see them? Honestly they are optional, they don't do anything extra for you, kind of. They serve as a reminder to people that you already own the copyright. Another benefit to adding a watermark to your work is that if it starts to circulate on the internet, it will get the credit back to you. So I think that's kind of cool. So watermarks, yes or no, it's kind of up to you.
Last topic here, licensing. So licensing, which is sometimes referred to as "usage" or "rights" is an agreement between you as an artist and a client where you give them the rights to use your work in a certain way for a certain amount of time in exchange for payment. So this is normally illustration, illustrators like to do this, and I don't know how it would apply to other artists, but I'm sure that it could. But if you are doing licensing you are going to be signing an agreement. So some of the factors that you consider when you're going into a licensing agreement are: the duration and time. So how long that client is going to have the control of your artwork. The geography and region, so where are they going to be showing, displaying and using your artwork. The type of license that you're giving them, so what are they making? Are they making t-shirts, business cards? Is it going to be for promotional use, for advertisement? You want to understand what they are going to do with your artwork, and make sure that aligns with your values. And exclusivity, so if it's an exclusive license, only that client can use that artwork for whatever amount of time you guys agreed on. So if you paint a picture of three little birds and you give exclusive rights to company X, company X is the only person who can use that picture of the three little birds until that license expires. Now, if it's non-exclusive, you can give company X the rights to use that picture of your three little birds for postcards, and then you can come over to company Y, and you can give them rights to use it for, maybe, some plates. So multiple people are able to use the license on your thing if it's a non-exclusive agreement. So those are some things to consider.
Another commonality in this type of situation is a "full buy out", and that's exactly like how it sounds, you give all the rights, all of your rights to your work, over to someone forever, shi-bang, it's theirs. So you create that work and then they have that work. You can't sell it again, you can't give it to anyone else, they can do whatever they want with the work that you create for them. So that's a full buy out.
Something that you should be wary of as an artist if you're looking to do licensing type work is "work-for-hire". Work-for-hire is basically where a company hires you super cheap and they have you create work at full buy out. But they don't want to pay you what you should be earning for a full buy out type of creation. So if you're offered any kind of deal for work-for-hire, definitely be wary about that. Understand that in most situations you're going to be giving away all the rights to your creative work, so make sure that the compensation is worth whatever your effort is in that creative work. Because you're going to be losing the rights to that artwork.
So again, that's all I have for today, I hope you found this video helpful. If you can go ahead and give it a thumbs up for helpfulness, I'd appreciate it. If you would like to see more art videos you can go ahead and subscribe to my channel. I do post a new video every Friday at 5:30 (CST). Final note, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not pretending to be a lawyer, this is just the hot take on artist's copyrights, and I'm going to put some links below for you if you want to do some further reading. And if you have any questions, don't even bother in the comments because I'm not a lawyer. Just go find a lawyer who is local to your area, and ask them your legal questions and they can give you some really great legal advice that will help you with your specific situation. So thanks for tuning in and I will see you next week."
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