Stock art site sues artist over his own work

A word of warning to artists that post their work to the web:

1. make sure you have some sort of copyright/copyleft protection.
2. keep an original file with datestamp on your harddrive
3. keep sketches, thumbnails or other work related to the design
4. keep emails with dates

Stockart.com is suing Jon Engle for $18,000 on grounds of copyright enfringement… of his own work. It’s convoluted and scary, but apparently someone has been claiming Engle’s art as their own and is using stockart.com (and their lawyers) to win damages.

Go to Creative Commons right now to get a license for your work.

YouTube is Evil II

This just in: Fair Use doesn’t mean anything! Thanks corporations!

Also, The Library has a digital slide rule (Flash) that can help you determine whether or not something is in the Public Domain. Hint: It probably is if it can still generate income. Originally you got 14 years + 1 renewal of 14 years, at which point the work would go to the Public Domain. In 1976 (thanks Disney!) copyright was altered to “the life of the author” + 50 years. Then in 1992 copyright renewal became automatic further clamping down on Public Domain and Fair Use. Then some other stuff happened. Then, in 1998 copyright was extended to “life + 70″ (thanks Sonny Bono!) which was applied to all currently copyrighted works. For a lot more information go this web page.

YouTube is Evil?

Better watch your content. YouTube’s “Block/Track/Monetize” policy is in the fine print whenever you upload something. What is it exactly? If your work matches any copyrighted content in YouTube’s database, the copyright owner is notified and given the 3 options above, the most insidious of which, Monetize, gives the copyright holder the right to advertise within your video. YouTube’s policy (case study at the Anti-Advertising Agency) is evil because it makes it impossible to distinguish “Fair Use” — by using a set of objective data points YouTube removes all question of Fair Use as outlined by the U.S. government (which suggests a subjective, contextual approach to copyright infringement).

See also this summary of Fair Use at the U.S. gov’t site.

Also see Copyleft.