HEY ARTISTS lets talk abt ur rights

your work is AUTOMATICALLY COPYRIGHTED !! from the moment it's completed you have rights over it. yes its always a good idea to get it officially registered but you can put the © and year YOURSELF without any legal registration required +

i see a lot of artists thinking they dont have rights over their work unless they fill out a form. any repost or reselling of your work is copyright infringement. period. +

while putting the © and saying "my work is copyrighted" is good to scare off reposters/resellers, in order to take a case to actual court, your work has to be officially registered. but in the case of repostings, most sites have something called a DMCA form+

it stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act and basically once you fill it out and prove the work belongs to you, the site will take it down themselves. no arguing with reposters :'D

im not a lawyer or anything but this is what ive been taught at art school plus a quick google search should be able to confirm all this. but if ur lazy here's a link lol https://www.artbusiness.com/register_and_copyright_art_for_artists.html

thanks for reading if u made it this far !

waa this thread is reaching a lot more people than i expected !! im glad it's helping so many of you

just thought id add some good points ive seen come up in the replies: yes, this applies to all areas of art including writing, music etc, but only if it's been created. +

ideas cannot be copyrighted.

in the case of sites saying in their user agreements that they have permission to share what you post, more often than not that's a fancy way of saying you're just agreeing to upload your work to their platform where others can see it+

the wording sounds scary but as @ihoundr said, it's no different than discord asking for permission to read your messages bc if they dont, they cant send them.

in the case of fanart of copyrighted characters, NO the company does not have ANY rights over your work itself BUT since your work depicts their copyrighted characters you can't legally sell it or make a profit off it unless the company has contracted you to do so.

make sure you check your countries laws around commissions! https://twitter.com/burnishfire/status/1251583501570359296?s=19

another perk of registering your work ! plus apparently in canada you dont need to have ur work registered to take a case to court :D https://twitter.com/gayrice_/status/1251694922689703936?s=19

!!! ty for 11k+ s !! idr have much to promote but if you wanna support me/my art i have a kofi ! http://ko-fi.com/astroxnot 

im prolly gna mute this soon but i just wanna say one more thing regarding fanart:

Use Your Judgement.
if youve seen ur peers making and selling fanart of this one thing for years with no consequence, it's a good bet the company understands ur not a threat +

but if the company is known for sending c&d letters left and right and consistently taking legal action against fanart (ie. m*rvel), better be careful

thanks again for reading !! help eachother out in the replies if you can <3