[MUSIC] Well, welcome back.

We are going to be talking about

something that every artist, every person making anything that's the unique
product of their own creative intellect. And their own creative abilities is really
foolish if they don't pay attention to. So I know you're not foolish,
let's get going. All right, you've made a wonderful
photograph that you're really happy about. That's fantastic, you're so happy
about it that you immediately post it on your Instagram account to share
with all your friendly followers. In fact, it is so good, that you
follow up with postings to Facebook. Where all your friends and acquaintances in
that social world
will be of course similarly impressed. Your next post on Twitpic, WeChat, and every
other social media you subscribe to,
wow, you're really rolling. That's fantastic. Now you're satisfied that everyone in
your world, and everyone who is a friend, of everyone in your world,
that shares your creative artwork, will have the pleasure
of seeing your picture. And you go on your way with your day, and
you're very just a happy, happy camper. However, you are oblivious,
that means just clueless, as to the fact that you
probably just gave away tens of thousands of dollars to strangers. Who may use your
work in ways that
might not actually please you. You may still own the photograph itself,
that digital file. And anyone who claimed that
the photograph was not made by you would certainly be wrong. But what you have just
done by
those postings is given away for free the most important right you created
at the moment you exposed the picture. The right that makes ownership of the
picture valuable in a monetary way that can be quite substantial. Let me quote from
the Instagram
terms of use effective early 2016. In a section that is quite
ironically titled, rights. Quote, Instagram does not claim ownership of any content
that you post on or
through the service. Sounds good to me. Well let's keep reading. Instead, and
here's the big instead, you hereby grant to
Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty free, transferable, sublicensable
worldwide license. To use the content,
that's your picture that you post on or through the service, end quote. Well
there's more legal
language that follows and you'll find similar lingo on Facebook,
Twitpic and others. It all boils down to this. You have given up your exclusive
right to copy the picture, your exclusive right to authorize
others to copy the picture. Your exclusive right to
license the picture for use in a commercial, or
illustrative contests. Context, excuse me, I'll start that again. You have given up
your exclusive
right to copy the picture. Your exclusive right to authorize
others to copy the picture. Your exclusive right to license
the picture for use in a commercial or illustrative context That could
earn you thousands of dollars. You have given up your
exclusive copyright. Well, I think you will agree that it is time to learn a little
bit
about this essential subject. In section 8 of
the United States Constitution, which enumerates the powers
of our Congress. The founders of my country
recognize the essential importance of creativity to the growth and
the prosperity of any nation. The importance of that growth and
prosperity was seen as essential. Not only in terms of monetary value,
but of its value to the culture. To the pursuit of happiness. That the founders
wished our nation to
be forever free to develop and nurture. They realized without a firm commitment
on the part of the government that the products of individual
creativity would absolutely benefit the person whose mind and
whose hard word had produced them. Those authors and
inventors of such creative works would be discouraged from
pursuing their dreams. When a citizenry is not motivated to excel in something that
humans
are uniquely suited to do. That is to say creative problem solving,
you can be guaranteed that the society will be one
that few would want to live in. Well sadly it is not hard to find
examples of such failed societies in recent history and
even in our own world right now. In this photograph of Wilbur Wright, one of the
famous Wright brothers,
the inventors of manned flight. Circling the Statue of Liberty
in 1909 pretty much sums up the freedoms that I hope all of
you are blessed to live under. Freedom to create and
to benefit from your creations. In simplest terms,
what is called common law terms. The exclusive right to copy or
to authorize others to copy or use is a tangible property right
of the author or inventor. We'll call him the photographer. That right begins at
the moment
of exposure in the camera. Now this right is separate from
the object or writing or other thing. You can sell the object and
still keep the copyright. I do this all the time when
any one of my photographic prints is sold on the gallery or
to a collector or to museum. They buy the object,
they do not buy the right to copy it. This is a commonly held standard although
it's not consistent across each country. You owe it to yourself to know and
understand the laws on
copyright in your own nation. In the USA, even before the photograph
is printed or shown on the screen. When it is fixed in a tangible form,
even if that form is zeros and ones recorded in a raw file that is
still on the memory card in the camera. Common law copyright is
established at that moment. So requirement number one for copyright is that it must
be a new creation in a fixed,
tangible form. Under this simple common law copyright
form, it is not necessary to register. Just to be able to prove that you're
the author who created the work. Now that is the case however
under this form of copyright, this common law, it's very
difficult to protect your rights. And it's even more difficult to
recover damages through this concept. Again in the United States of America, an
author may establish legal
proof of their copyright. By registering those creative works with the
Superintendent of
Documents in Library of Congress. With registration comes a certificate
from that Library of Congress. A repository whose records are freely able
to be checked by anyone who wants to. To assure whether the copyright ownership
is something that they can use or not. That certificate comes with the power to
recover something
called statutory damages. Which are defined as penalties
by statutes or laws. These penalties can result
in huge awards of money from those who infringe your copyrights. Infringement is
the technical term for stealing your intellectual property and
using it without your permission. Statutory or law based damages,
are only available however, to photographers or others, if their
works have been previously registered. And these penalties can amount
to up to $150,000 per use. So for example, if your picture
is used in an advertisement that is printed in 10,000 brochures
distributed across the United States. By an ad agency that knew it did not
have the right to use the picture, but did so anyway? The bill could come to 1.5
billion,
that's with a b, as in boy, dollars. Do I have your attention at this point? Well,
the fact is that I,
your humble professor, did not register the copyright for
a certain picture some years ago. And exactly that situation occurred. And that
meant I could
not collect $1.5 billion. I did get a pretty nice fee because my
attorney contacted the ad agency and said, hello. You used a picture that
you shouldn't have. But it wasn't anything close to allowing
me to buy a new house, for example. If you're not a US citizen,
you may still register your works for protection in the United States. Whether
you're a U.S. citizen or not, failure to register your
copyrights on a regular basis. Maybe at least once a year,
is something you may well regret. An important thing to know is
that an idea is not protected by copyright because it's not
fixed in a tangible form. However, a photograph that expresses
that idea is copyrightable. There are a few very narrowly
defined exceptions to copyright. And we refer to these, and
lawyers do too, as fair uses. And these are uses which
will allow someone else to use these copyrighted works without
the author's specific permission. Fair use includes use of
the work in a descriptive manner, such as Writing an article about it. Or using it
to prove
a point in a court of law. Or in an educational context such
as a teacher giving a lesson on photography as part of their
regular educational duties using slides of works of art that
are certainly copyrighted. And they could not otherwise use for
a commercial purpose, for example. Another activity in which a person may not
penalized for using the copyrighted work of another, including even your own
photographs, is in the case of parody. Parody, as illustrated in
this set of images from 1887, shows a work by Michelangelo
obviously on the left. And a work by the artist
known as Sapeck on the right. The work on the right is an initiation
of another person's creative works or style but in a humorous manner. Often in a
manner that
makes fun actually of or ridicules the art work itself,
or the artist, or both. Now I understand that the copyright
laws are different in many countries, if not in most countries,
from those in the USA. I do hope you'll be better able
to understand the copyright laws in whatever part of the world you live in. And
encourage protection of the creativity
that is nurtured by its legal powers. The beauty of this copyright
is that it is a right. And you get to decide whether
to exercise it or not. If it does not matter to you,
then no worries. Just go ahead and shoot and
post to Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and WeChat and other social
media and just forget about it. However, if you look at photography as
something that you might want to make an income from. Or you just want to be sure
that your
pictures are not used by somebody else to support a political,
or social, or business, or some other activity or
purpose that you would not approve of. Then you need to know about and
protect your copyrights. In this digital world, it's more
common every year for photographers to find their pictures used in places and
for purposes they never knew existed. How can one be sure that their work
is not being used to promote a cause they don't believe in? Or to sell a product
they never heard of? And certainly, they're not getting
paid for that right to do so. Well, where there's a vacuum, some enterprising
persons
will come in to fill it. And new companies such as Pixsy.com
are coming to the rescue. Pixsy uses massive computer search
engines to scour the Internet. And find unauthorized uses
of its clients' pictures. And then not only notifies
the photographers. But helps them to find lawyers in the area
that can help them recover the fees they should've been paid. Hopefully soon,
copyright infringers
will find out that they can run but they can't hide. You may remember, a few months
ago when we talked about
setting up your digital camera. That we recommended that you input
your copyright information right into the camera menu, right into the metadata
for each file that you exposed. So that it would be present in
a sidecar for each picture. Now you know a lot more about
why that can be very important. [MUSIC]