In the years I’ve been displaying art and sharing articles on my web sites, a number of people have “borrowed” my work without asking and used it for their own purposes. I am like most creatives in such instances and look poorly on the infringement. Most people are apologetic and will remove the material quickly, however more than one has claimed “fair use” and refused to apologize for the crime or remove the offending materials from their site.

As part of the copyright law, Fair Use is shrouded in mystery because it is not clearly stated what is and is not meant by the term. I remember a case where an artist was sued by the New York Times (I believe, it was years ago and my memory is cloudy) for copyright infringement for using images in a collage. The newspaper won and the artist had to pay damages.

Joan Beiringer’s Blog has this to say about the subject.

During the last year, there has been a lot of press on what is fair use in art, photography, music and the written word. Fair use is a very complex concept because the law does not provide clear guidelines on what is fair use and what constitutes an infringement. Unfortunately many people believe the “old-wives-tale” that all you need to do is change art a certain amount and you don’t have to worry about getting sued. However, what is allowed in fair use is more complicated than that…

Visit her web site to read the rest of the article and find more links to other information on copyright law and fair use.

Happy New Year. See you in 2010!