Being able to protect and enforce your copyright is essential for any artist, as this protects both your economic rights and your reputation as an artist.
Protection can be both legal and practical. Legal protection is covered by the use of copyright symbols, wording and licensing agreements for reproduction rights, while practical protection includes the encryption of your images to prevent unauthorised copying from your website. This section also considers the enforcement of your rights overseas, what happens if you use the value of your artwork as collateral to raise money, and useful organisations to contact if you do find that your copyright has been infringed.
Idea/Expression Dichotomy
This year marks the centenary of the creation of a work widely accepted as the most influential of the 20th century: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917. This readymade and its reception heralded the tran …
Small Claims
The knowledge economy is evolving into the network economy. Traditional business practices are rapidly changing accordingly. But the machinery of governments and legislatures grind at a much slower pa …
Post-Internet Art
The World Wide Web is 25 years old this year. UK computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the concept in March 1989, and by November that year he had achieved the first Internet communication …
Renting Art: Borrowers and Lenders Beware
Borrowing and lending art is generally a good thing. The practice can increase and broaden access by spectators who might not otherwise be able to experience directly the creative act. It can also gen …
Editions or Series: Picking Up The Pieces
A century ago Marcel Duchamp toyed with the idea of creating a box to hold notes and sketches for his works which eventually resulted in The Green Box, 1934, containing notes for the Large Glass, 1915 …
What is Sculpture?
On 27 July 2011 the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) handed down a landmark judgment that decided the legal meaning of sculpture in UK copyright law. The significance of this decision is far-reaching, because …
Performance Art and The Law
The resurgence of performance-related artistic practices over the past decade raises complex aesthetic, legal and, at times, ethical questions regarding the protection, authorship and ownership of the …
Copying by Universities
The new year ushered in several important judicial decisions dealing with artlaw matters, including the Bacon Estate; the Sotheby’s and Christie’s so-called ‘price-fixing’ case; payments to artists of …
Credit Where It’s Due?
Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol met in New York City – firstly only to shake hands, in May 1963, outside the Museum of Modern Art where both were entering the opening of the show ‘Americans 63′. Then D …
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