Just because this topic came up in another thread, I thought it might be illuminating to review the high points of U.S. copyright law and the implications for geeks like us who make graphics, avatars, etc. I've been a professional web developer for 10 years, now, and I still find there are a lot of misconceptions about this.

I would also like to point out that this is the U.S. law. Copyright law, as of yet, is not an international standard, which is why you get these cases of bootlegging, etc. in various countries.

1) If someone has created it, it's protected by copyright.

People sometimes confuse -registering- a copyright with -actual- copyright. If you write a poem on a napkin, it's your intellectual property and protected by copyright law. You do not need to register it, nor do you need to add "Copyright 2007 by Me" at the bottom.

Registering a copyright and/or making a copyright notation at the bottom of a work is only helpful in terms of establishing credibility in case of a legal dispute. If both you and I claim to have written a song, and I've registered the copyright and you haven't, the judge is more likely to believe me if there's no other evidence, but registering does not -create- copyright protection.

So, every piece of text and every graphic out on the Internet is already under copyright protection and the intellectual (and I use the term loosely when it comes to material on Internet forums) property of the creator, even if it doesn't specifically say that.

2) Altering a graphic does not make it "yours" or cause copyright protection not to apply.

Think of it like this. If I check out a copy of The Oxbow Incident, and I rewrite Chapter Six, and publish it under my own name, I'm going to get sued for copyright violation. The fact that I altered it does not make it a unique work of my own.

In the same manner, if you download a graphic from a website and modify it, copyright law still applies to that graphic. So, if you extract something from a graphic into an image that you're creating, or if you change the background, or if you incorporate it into a sig or an avatar, that's technically a violation of the copyright on that image.

3) The odds of you getting caught are extremely slim.

Depending on what you do with it, of course. Somebody has to catch you, and then they also have to care.

To be on the safe side, I usually shoot the owner of an image an email asking if I can use it for whatever I'm using it for. If they say yes, then I have a documented agreement that I have license to use it. If they say no, then I know they'll get bothered by my use of it. And if they say nothing at all, well, then I can make my own decision about whatever I feel comfortable doing. Another way of dealing with this issue is to give credit in your derivative work - similar to citing a quotation in an academic paper. You say who created the original material and where it came from.

The fact is that, for things like casual forum avatar/sig use, etc. 99.9999% of content owners are just not going to care. And even if they did care, they probably won't know. But at the same time, that doesn't mean it isn't a copyright violation, and you should make your decision armed with that information.

Umm, you left out a lot of information regarding the concept of collage/fair use/critique etc.

Well, yes. It wasn't my intention to make an exhaustive treatment of all the various issues related to satire, etc., but collages are NOT protected under fair use, and are subject to copyright violation laws. That's another important misconception.

So, assume I'm Australian. I can steal all the IP I want?

Who died and made you an authority on IP law?

@Okin: I couldn't say. There's an effort toward standardization and mutual recognition of the copyright laws in each country, but that's a long ways from happening, as you might imagine. As a result, prosecution becomes very dicey when, say, someone in Hungary distributes copies of an American DVD in Hungary. I don't really know anything about Australia's copyright laws.

@Verithrax: I'm not sure where the hostility is coming from, but to answer your question, I've been on both sides of IP litigation more than once, and several industry certifications I've had to get include questions about IP law, especially as it pertains to material available on the Internet. That probably doesn't make me an authority compared to, say, an IP lawyer, but it does make me an authority compared to, say, you.

Well la-te-da.

2 and 3 do apply where Lusternia is concerned. I can't believe how many people get shrubbed because they re-use some images or stories. How simple a concept is it that if you want to win the equivalent of a monetary prize, don't even think of using anything else in whole or in part.

Interesting, that isn't what my artschool taught me. Though ofcourse it depends how mutilated the picture is.

For example, if you take a square inch of a picture, and then use that square inch to populate your own picture, so that there is no connection thematically between the original and your new piece, that is ok.

Well, when you get into minimal amounts, you start getting inconsistent rulings, but it isn't a completely safe haven.

If you're an artist and interested in copyright law, this site is a good starting point for relevant material.