Category: copyright

Bravo, Walters!

The Walters Art Museum has donated some 19,000 images of works from their collections to Wikimedia. They are among the museums — another is the Getty — who reject…

Frequently asked questions — how do I protect my work’s copyright?

I receive a lot of e-mail from aspiring authors, mainly because of the popularity of my guide to getting a book published, and to a lesser degree my…

Copyright flow chart

The law firm of Bromberg and Sunstein has an unusually handy flow chart of U.S. copyright duration on their website. Speaking of copyright, the flow chart bears a…

Creative Commons

If you will glance down at the footer on this page (or follow the “about” or “policies” links) you will see that I have replaced my copyright notices…

Happy Public Domain Day

Midnight at the end of December 31 marked the passing of countless works into public domain. Copyright laws vary by country around the world. Most countries observe passage…

Is copyright corroding our society?

That’s what Stanford professor Larry Lessig says in this lecture (it takes about 19 minutes and it’s well worth watching the whole thing — but in any case…

Optimal Copyright

Rufus Pollock, a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Cambridge, has done a calculation that he says shows the optimum term of copyright is 14 years….

Copyright video

Below is part one of the Disneyfied copyright video. I previously linked to part two — which proves the information must be reliable.

The Fairy Use Doctrine

Disney characters recite the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use.

Answering the copyright question for books published 1923-1963

Okay, we know books published in the U.S. before 1923 are probably in public domain. And the copyright of books published after 1963 was automatically renewed. But books…