copyright - A pillar of art law: the legal right granted to a creator, a publisher, or a distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of an artistic, literary, theatrical, or musical work. Often signified by the mark ©, the year declared, and the name of the owner.

Copyright regulations are based upon the French notion of droit moral.

The past tense is copyrighted (not "copywritten").

opyright of visual art - Under the Berne Convention, each and every work of art is either a copyrighted work or one in "the public domain." If the artist is alive or has been dead less than seventy years, all rights to reproductions of his or her work reside with the artist or with the artist's estate.

The Fair Use Provision of the Copyright Act states:

§107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2 . the nature of the copyrighted work;
3 . the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
4 . the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Public Domain:
When an artist has been dead more than seventy years, his or her work is in the public domain. Reproduction rights are then concerned with rights held by those who have produced photographs of the works (in other words, if you took a snapshot of a public domain work yourself, you could do anything you want with it). Normally, museums have commissioned photographs of their works and thus hold the rights to these photographs to be used in reproduction. So, a first step here would be to contact the museum where the work is held.

• U.S. Copyright Office.
• Artists Rights Society (ARS)
  65 Bleecker Street
  New York, NY 10012
  (212) 420-9160
• Visual Artists and Galleries Association, Inc. (VAGA)
  350 Fifth Avenue Suite 6305
  New York, New York 10018
  212 736 6666
  212 736 6767 Fax
  E-mail rpanzer.vaga@erols.com
• Robert A. Barron is an eminent "arts information consultant" living in Larchmont, New York. His site has articles on copyright and intellectual property, art history, museology and criticism, museum and arts computerization, and much more.
• Copywrite & Fair Use on the Web and the Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions are both great resources on the subject.
• Copyright explained "the Disney way" by Stanford's Fair use project via a short video available on YouTube.
• Benedict O'Mahoney's The Copyright Website. O'Mahoney is a copyright lawyer. This site is full of his opinions (and examples from case law) that explain the difference between "fair use" (without the need for permission) of art images and "infringement." It is a very complete and readable examination of the complex subject of intellectual property, the internet, and the constituionally mandated right to public discussion of public entities.
• DigitalConsumer is a nonprofit, grassroots organization devoted to fighting recent changes in copyright law (with a focus on technology). This excellent site has lots of information about how people can take action to stop draconian copyright laws.
• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that promotes the innovative reuse of all sorts of intellectual works. Its first project is a set of copyright licenses to help creators tell others that their copyrighted works are free for copying under certain conditions.
• Public Knowledge is a public-interest advocacy organization dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant "information commons." This Washington, D.C. based group speaks in a single voice for a wide spectrum of stakeholders — libraries, educators, scientists, artists, musicians, journalists, consumers, software programmers, civic groups and enlightened businesses.
• Electronic Frontier Foundation is an organization dedicated to protecting civil liberties as they relate to technology.
• Lawrence Lessig is the acclaimed Stanford Law School professor and intellectual property expert.
• "Eldred v. Ashcroft" is the official site for the folks fighting the Sonny Bono Act in the Supreme Court. Mostly for legal types, but the links section has a lot of good stuff.
• Opposing Copyright Extension. Lots of background here on the Sonny Bono Act. By Prof. Dennis Karjala
• Chilling Effects is a great site that collects "cease and desist" notices and provides background on the intellectual property issues involved.
• The Digital Future Coalition (DFC) was formed in 1995 in response to the Clinton administration's "White Paper on Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure," which recommended significantly altering existing copyright law in ways that would restrict access to digital information by educators, businesses, libraries, consumers, and others. The DFC is a collaboration of non-profit educational, scholarly, library, and consumer groups, together with major commercial trade associations representing leaders in the consumer electronics, telecommunications, computer, and network access industries. DFC members include the American Library Assoc., the American Council of Learned Societies, the Assoc. of Research Libraries, the Modern Language Assoc., and the National Education Assoc.
• A paper by Gary Schwartz: "No fair: long-term prospects for regaining unencumbered use" outlines a variety of controversial legal strategies scholars and art historians may be able to invoke to reclaim their traditional rights to access and publish images of works of art without obtaining permission and without paying for reproduction rights. Presented at the Town Meeting on Copyright and Fair Use offered at the annual meeting of the College Art Assoc., Toronto, Canada, February 1998.
• The best source for licensing rights to public domain works is Art Resource. Art Resource is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive stock photo archives singularly devoted to fine art. They have access to over 3 million images ranging in time periods from the prehistoric to the present and from practically every location around the world.
• Bronze Artists for Copyright is a site about contemporary piracy of sculptures, mostly in bronze — poor imitations mass produced and sold with or without the original artists' name, and sometimes with fictitious ones. One allegedly made-up, nonexistent sculptor is "Italian sculptor, Leonardo Rossi." Such contemporary piracy seems most often to involve foundaries in China and Thailand, and their products sold around the world, often from garden shops, furniture stores and lesser galleries.
• A History of Copyright in the United States.
• And now for dessert:
  Illegal Art.com offers videos that challenge the limits of copyright laws. "The laws governing 'intellectual property' have grown so expansive in recent years that artists need legal experts to sort them all out. Borrowing from another artwork will now land you in court. Rooted in the U.S. Constitution, copyright was originally intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas but is now being used to stifle it. The Illegal Art Exhibit celebrates what is rapidly becoming the 'degenerate art' of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court. Loaded with gray areas, intellectual property law inevitably has a silencing effect, discouraging the creation of new works."
  Be sure to read the "ELECTRONIC END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT . . . . " It's hilarious. The films and videos present George W. Bush meets the Teletubbies, Barbie tries a new job, Pikachu (of Pokemon fame) makes a friend, and more. Watch digitized versions of the films and videos. Illegal Art's articles on copyright issues.