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copyright/intellectual rights question

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L

luityler

Guest
I live in Utah.

I have a website where I post my drawings and paintings. I was wondering if I automatically have the rights to my drawings or if someone else could copy my page and get the rights to all of my drawings. Is this something I should worry about?
 


divgradcurl

Senior Member
I was wondering if I automatically have the rights to my drawings
Yes. Copyright attach's as soon as a creative work is "fixed in a tangible format" -- as soon as you pen to paper, you were covered by copyright law.

if someone else could copy my page and get the rights to all of my drawings.
No. Only the original creator can vest a copyright in a work. The copyright can be transferred, of course, but only the creator of a work can get the initial copyright. In any event, under current law, the copyright was created as soon as the work was created, so anyone who steals someone else's work is stealing something that is already copyrighted, and you can't get a copyright on a work that already has one.

Is this something I should worry about?
You don't have to worry about losing your rights to the works. To lose a copyright, you either have to transfer it to someone else in some fashion, or explicitly hand the work over to the public domain, in which case NOBODY would hold the copyright.

But to a more practical question -- how much protection do you want or need? If someone steals your work, and tries to do something with it or claim it as their own, what do you plan to do? Copyrights are not self-enforcing, and the cops or government won't enforce them -- you'll need to enforce them through the courts. And that costs money, oftentimes lots of it.

If you plan to rely on the "automatic" copyright and you later need to enforce it through the courts, note that the most you'll be able to sue for is "actual damages" -- that is, the amount of money you can PROVE that you lost because of the infringement.

However, if the copyrights are registered with the copyright office, then you have many options -- you can still sue for "actual damages," but you can also sue for statutory damages -- these are damages you can receive even if you can't show actual damages -- and also injunctive relief, like having the courts force the other party to do certain things with respect to your copyrighted work. The statutory damages alone can make enforcement of a copyright reasonable (from a money perspective) even if you haven't suffered provable actual damages.

So, if you really want to protect the works, you should consider registering them with the copyright office. If you're not THAT worried about them, or don't want to spend the money, then you can rely on the automatic copyright, and know that the rights to your work cannot be taken from you, you just may have more trouble enforcing them!

I know this goes beyond the scope of what you asked, but I thought it might be useful to you and anyone else reading this post who might have the same or similar questions.
 

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