How do NFTs Impact Artists?

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How do NFTs Impact Artists?

Ever since the digital artist Beeple sold an NFT (non-fungible token) of his work for $69 million dollars, there’s been a ridiculous amount of excitement surrounding NFTs. Some have called it a revolutionary way to buy and sell copyrights while others have called it a fad, a scam, or worse. The truth is, it’s far too early to tell what the true economic or societal impacts of NFTs are, at least until the hype dies down. And I’m far from an expert so I don’t think my input on that front is helpful anyway. I’m more interested in the legal impacts of NFTs which are, presently, unclear.

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You Made a Collage, But That Doesn't Give You Rights In the Underlying Work

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You Made a Collage, But That Doesn't Give You Rights In the Underlying Work

The longer I practice law, the more I recognize certain “seasons” in my work; sometimes I’ll have a period where all my clients are filmmakers. Perhaps six months will go by where all my work revolves around trademarks in some way. Maybe I’ll have ten people in a row ask me about indemnity clauses. Lately many of my clients or prospective clients are visual or graphic artists producing collages. And they all want to know the same thing: can they use the work of others in their collages?

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The Benefits of Copyright Registration

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The Benefits of Copyright Registration

Oftentimes, I get this question from current or prospective clients: “how do I copyright my work?” I usually tell them, “you don’t have to because you (most likely) already own it. Copyright isn’t an act one engages in, it’s a suite of rights, granted under the U.S. Copyright Act, that attached from the moment your work is ‘fixed in a tangible medium of expression.’” That is, the moment your work is recorded somehow - in writing, on paper, on a computer, in audio, video, etc, etc. Among the rights granted to you under copyright law: the right to own, use, exploit, and transfer ownership to the work. Other than creating it, you do not need to engage in any further actions to own it.

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On Whether You Can Use Someone Else's Copyrighted Work As Reference Material For Your Own

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On Whether You Can Use Someone Else's Copyrighted Work As Reference Material For Your Own

"As part of my (illustration) process, I source and screenshot or drag images of people, places, and things from Google (usually stock photos) which I then combine and trace to create my illustrations. It would be hard for any of these stock photos to be identified outright in my work, as they are mainly used as the skeleton for postures and environments in my drawings. They are transformed by my invention of things like clothes and other details, and by my linework 'style.' What do you think of this? Am I doing anything legally risky?"

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You Made a Collage, But That Doesn't Give You Rights In the Underlying Work

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You Made a Collage, But That Doesn't Give You Rights In the Underlying Work

The longer I practice law, the more I recognize certain “seasons” in my work; sometimes I’ll have a period where all my clients are filmmakers. Perhaps six months will go by where all my work revolves around trademarks in some way. Maybe I’ll have ten people in a row ask me about indemnity clauses. Lately I’ve been in a season where clients are visual or graphic artists producing collages. And they all want to know the same thing: can they use the work of others in their collages?

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Ask Greg: What's the Difference Between Selling and Licensing Your Work?

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Ask Greg: What's the Difference Between Selling and Licensing Your Work?

Recently I held a webinar on contracts during which I made passing reference to the difference between selling and licensing one's work. Afterwards, one of the attendees emailed me asking "so what actually IS the difference between selling your work and licensing it?" It's one of those questions that on the surface feels like it should have an obvious answer but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's kind of like home equity or taxes (or really anything to do with money)... it's something that as an adult you vaguely understand, but you're honestly not sure and you've gone too long to admit it.

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Paramount Releases Star Trek Fan Film Guidelines, Shows Other Studios How To Interact With Fans

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Surely you’ve heard by now the story of the troubled fan film, Star Trek: Axanar. The film, which had earned over a million dollars from backers on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, was sued by Paramount for violating “innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes." While Star Trek fan films have been around forever (I was a Trekkie as a kid and remember seeing them a lot at meetings and conventions), Paramount was concerned about Axanar’s size and scale - high quality visual effects, name actors, feature-length runtime, etc. I guess they were concerned that a film of sufficient quality could impact not only the release of Star Trek Beyond, but its future slate of Trek films and spinoffs. 

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When Politicians Use Music Without Permission It’s Not a Copyright Issue, It’s a Trademark Issue (But It Doesn’t Matter Anyway)

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Do you remember the time Donald Trump played “It’s The End of the World as We Know It” at a campaign rally and REM told him not to use their music "for your moronic charade of a campaign?" Or that time John McCain used “Running on Empty” in a TV ad bashing Obama and Jackson Browne sued him? Or that time Rand Paul used “Tom Sawyer” during his Senate run and Rush said that it was obvious Paul “hates women and brown people?"* It seems like every time there’s an election, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a band upset at a politician for using its music. And with a year left before the general election, it’ll happen a few more times at least.

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Graffiti Is Art Worth Suing Over

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Last week, graffiti artist Joseph Tierney, also known as Rime, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against fashion designer Jeremy Scott and his house Moschino for that exact infraction. Moschino took Rime’s design entitled “Vandal Eyes" and placed it one a dress, recently modeled by Gigi Hadid at the Met Gala (a sentence I never would’ve understood 10 years ago). 

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Will A New Copyright Act Strip Artists Of Their Copyrights? And If So, Would It Really Be So Bad?

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An "orphan work" is a work of art whose owner is not known and not findable, thus making licensing or purchasing of the rights impossible. The new Copyright Act will ostensibly 1) encourage artists to register their works to avoid orphaning, thus decreasing monetary recovery if the work is infringed, and 2) force users to file a “notice of use” with the Copyright Office with a description of the work, a summary of the search they conducted to find the copyright owner, the source of the work, and a description of the how the work will be used in order to facilitate communication between owners and users. In large part, the Act would limit the financial liability of someone who infringed the work after making a good faith diligent attempt to find the owner.

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