Protecting Your Fine art: Copyrights

Your art is a personal investment of fourth dimension, money, and effort. Moreover, it is your intellectual property. Protect your property, protect your copyright.

For the art world, the internet is a lot like the American frontier: full of opportunity and promise – but also a place to be wary. Today, with but a few clicks, you lot can share your fine art with a worldwide audience, run into and acquire new collectors and fans, heighten money for your fine art projects, and make life-long friends. Nonetheless, along with this convenience comes a whole new wave of dangers and drawbacks, sometimes leaving artists exposed and vulnerable.

For many artists out at that place, the largest looming nightmare iscopyright infringement.Art is your craft and your livelihood, and it is a personal investment of your time, money, effort, and soul. Moreover, it is your intellectual property . Protecting your fine art needs to exist a priority. There are a number of ways to help y'all exercise this, and nosotros've laid them out for you in a quick, unproblematic guide.

Did Yous Know? If someone clicks a picture of your art and posts it on the internet without crediting you, it qualifies as an act of copyright infringement.

Protecting Your Art Against Copyright Infringement

"Intellectual belongings is a property correct that can exist protected under federal and state police force, including copyrightable works, ideas, discoveries, and inventions. The term intellectual property relates to intangible belongings such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and merchandise secrets." – Usa Legal

"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they tin be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."  – United States Copyright Office

In layman'south terms, intellectual property is your right to protect your original work while a copyright is established when an original work is created tangibly (not merely conceptually). Notwithstanding, unregistered work can often exist hard to prove as your own, which is why information technology is important to keep digital or physical records. If you lot ever need to have a case to court, think almost how well you lot tin can demonstrate that you lot are the creator of the artwork in question.

So, legally, how can yous protect your art from copyright infringement?

Always Sign Your Name On Your Work

This is the get-go step in protecting your art against copyright violation. Adapt the habit of signing all your works, preferably with the year of completion.

Antelope Canyon 3 | Acrylic on Sail | Jerry Anderson

You must e'er sign your artwork once information technology is finished. You could do information technology discreetly in a corner, or make you signature a part of the artwork, similar Jerry Anderson does. Yous tin also sign the back of the artwork.

Annals Your Work

If you're a U.S. artist, it is recommended that you officially register your artwork with the Copyright Office of the U.S. Library of Congress. Even though a copyright is automatically in place at the moment of creation, registering the piece of work ensures you have sufficient proof that the work is yours. It also enables y'all to need more money in the event of a copyright infringement conform. Here's how the registration process works in the United States:

  • Become to the Library of Congress website and click on the electronic Copyright Office (eCO). Fill out the registration form and pay the required fee.
  • In one case the registrar'southward function examines your application, they will ship yous an official certificate of registration. This serves as documented prove of your copyright, which volition likewise exist filed online as a matter of public record.

We recommend that you cheque your country's Copyright laws after reading this commodity. Although Intellectual Belongings laws are like throughout, at that place might be some nuances and differences that you should know about.

Keep Digital Records Of Your Work

A picture is worth a thou words – specially if someone is claiming that your work is their own. Having a digital library of your artwork will save you a lot of hassle in the event of copyright infringement, every bit you tin can nowadays this record in court. The bully thing nigh photographs is that their metadata often stores the date that the pictures were taken. We have a guide for taking great photographs of your artwork, but a professional lensman tin likewise be used to ensure that two people have show to support any copyright infringement cases.

Related Article: Documenting The Auction Of Your Artwork

Recognize The Risks

You lot create a lot of art, so it's important to focus your art copyright protection efforts where it's going to count. For instance, if you produce art that's more than abstruse or conceptual (and thus more hard to reproduce), then your run a risk of copyright infringement will be substantially lower. However, if you lot take pieces that comprise creatures or characters that could conceivably exist borrowed or replicated, or if you create images that are very iconic or accept high mass market appeal, then you lot should always protect them using the steps outlined in a higher place.

Now, those in a higher place are all keen safeguards that volition prepare you lot well if you always need to file a claim confronting a copyright infringement. However, there are several easy practices to prevent the theft of your images.

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Protecting Your Art On Your Website

There'due south no doubt that posting your work online can exist risky. At the same time, in this increasingly digital fine art world, online exposure is often critical to an artist's success. While nothing is foolproof, there are some measures you can accept to help protect your art on the spider web.

Convert Your Images to Wink

Earlier posting them online, you lot may wish to convert your images into a flash slideshow. This makes information technology incommunicable for those on the web to simply copy and paste the paradigm. You lot can do this by downloading special slideshow converters or consulting a spider web design professional.

Only Publish Minor, Depression-Resolution Images

A pocket-sized, low-resolution image just isn't worth stealing for most people. Notwithstanding, before you run off to resize all of your images to thumbnails, brand sure youdo non save them over your high-res images. Once you save an prototype every bit minor and low-res, you cannot get that file to ever exist high resolution again. For all y'all hold dear, save the web-ready version as aseparate file.

Windows or Mac, you can use almost whatever epitome-editing software to resize images. From Photoshop to Pigment, the process is universally pretty similar. You'll unremarkably observe the "Resize" choice under the "Edit" toolbar. Converting to lower resolution can exist a little trickier.

Consider Adding Watermarks To Your Images

A watermark is a logo or name that is placed on top of an prototype. Watermarks credit you as the artist of your image and it is very difficult for anyone to remove/change this.

The one virtually used is the copyright notice, all-time known equally the C symbol (©), plus the yr the work was published, or the abbreviation Copr. You should also include the year of completion as well equally your proper name into this watermark. It should await something like –

art copyright
This curated space image was featured on our Facebook Page, and in order to protect the image digitally created by us every bit well the painting of our artist, Corinne Garese, we could place a watermark to denote authorship.

Protecting Your Art On Social Media

While it's possible for y'all to keep track of the number of people visiting and viewing your works on your site (and in that location are some good measures to protect them from beingness copied), one time you add together your images to social media at that place is absolutely no knowing where they will end upwards. All the same, avoiding social media altogether tin be a serious disadvantage also. And then, how practise you protect your image? Here are some tips!

Read The Terms And Conditions

Do yous promote your artwork on Instagram? How nigh other social media websites? Recently, artist Richard Prince sold a series of other peoples' Instagram photographs and made out with around $100,000. Though this seems like an outright copyright infringement, the issue is actually in a legal grey-area. One matter we know for sure – these images would have been protected if they had been registered federally with a copyright. Whenever you are posting your artwork to other platforms, be sure to read the terms and weather to determine what fine art copyright protection your fine art has there.

Useful Article: How To Promote Your Art On Instagram

Always Add A Watermark To Your Image

But like on your website, a watermark is i of the all-time tools to protect your art across social media. Not only does a watermark plainly tells the viewer that your work is protected past copyright, it will also assistance in a court case, as the other artist won't be able to say his or her utilize of your work was "innocent infringement" (meaning it was copied unknowingly).

Place your watermark conspicuously beyond the image. Don't simply stick it on the border – you don't want anyone cropping the watermark out.

Information technology'southward increasingly of import, especially in our digital age, to protect your artwork from copyright infringement. Hopefully, these safeguards and practices will ensure that your intellectual property remains your own.

With over 30 years of feel representing artists from around the world, Agora Gallery offers artists the opportunity to present their work to a broad range of national and international art collectors and buyers. Looking for an opportunity to enhance your career? Visit our Gallery Representation And Artist Promotion folio for more information.

If you have any questions, permit the states know in the comments or electronic mail usa at blogs@agora-gallery.com!