Thank you Mr. Hamper!!

No, Becky, that is OK. She is a HE by the way! Eric

Oh ok. Thank you for letting me use the picture. Hope I didn't offend the snake ;)

A crash course in copyrights:

Just FYI, the creator of any creative work not derived from the work of others or done as "work for hire" (such as by a graphic designer for a book publisher) automatically owns the copyright from the moment the work is "published" or made tangible in any form.

In other words, if you write your friend a letter, you own the copyright from the time it is put on paper. If you take a photo, you own the copyright from the time the negative is fixed (though there are limitations to whom and what it is permissable to photograph and publish without permission, and copyright on photos of the works of others such as sculptures is slightly more complicated). If, however, you take someone else's work and modify it, you do not own the copyright to the resulting work (there are exceptions, such as a copyright on a short-story anthology in which it is the editing, arrangement, etc. for which the resultant copyright is held), which means if you take someone else's photo and add several Photoshop effects, the copyright is still held by the owner of the copyright of the original picture and not by you.

The short version of this is that any time you would like to quote someone's work extensively (not excerpt for review, for example) or publish someone else's work (such as including a breeder's photo of an animal you purchased in a forum post), you are legally obligated to get the permission of the copyright owner before using it in such a way. If you do not seek and receive permission for its use, you can be sued for damages and copyright infringement, regardless of whether you made a profit from using the material.

Marla, do you work at a law firm, too? I'm impressed.

original fixed and tangible original fixed and tangible - that's copyrightable haha :) I'm in college for music business and communications so i've had some copyright law as well.

Smynx, no, but I have had someone try to rip off my work, which motivated me to learn. ;) They actually had the guts to reproduce it, put their own copyright notice on it, and try to make a profit off it. It still ticks me off to this day, and that was almost 9 years ago now.

what'd they steal? video, paper, general herp info? don't have to answer just curious because someone tried that too with a couple of songs I wrote... thankfully I had copyrighted them in 2000

Wow, Marla, that really sucks. That's not the way you want to go about learning the law.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marla

Smynx, no, but I have had someone try to rip off my work, which motivated me to learn. ;) They actually had the guts to reproduce it, put their own copyright notice on it, and try to make a profit off it. It still ticks me off to this day, and that was almost 9 years ago now.

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You learn a thousand lessons when you get ripped off :)

Actually, it was a graphic design I did for a web site I had and related group/organization I was trying to start. I took the design to a friend with a printing business to have t-shirts made, and she and her partner changed the colors slightly and put their own copyright notice at the bottom and sold the shirts at a public event, with my text and logo design otherwise unchanged. What's worse is that, as a professional graphic designer, she knew better and I knew that. The worst thing about it is that it ruined a good friendship. Grrrr.