Freelancing and Copyright — An Uncomfortable Arrangement

When Congress last amended copyright law in 1976, they added a clause that causes problems for freelance artists, writers, and designers. Basically, the law gave copyright ownership to the ”author” of a creative work as long as it was not a ”work made for hire,” in which case the copyright belonged to the organization for whom the project was executed.

Corporations such as publishers of newspapers and magazines went to court to protect their rights to withhold royalties from freelancers under an argument that the work was done “for hire” and not that the author loaned the work for publication; and these battles are still being waged.

In 1989, one of these court battles made it all the way to the Supreme Court who ruled in favor of freelance artists on commission. This is a huge win since it stated that freelance artists in most instances can keep the benefits of copyright, which include licensing and reproduction rights and protection against unauthorized copying. The decision also poses practical problems for businesses that rely heavily on freelance work.

                           What is a Copyright?

When you post the following statement:
Copyright © year Your Company Name. All rights reserved.
… you are stating that you own all the rights and privileges to your work, period. You are protecting yourself from anyone who tries to “make and sell copies of the work, publicly show the work, import or export the work and assign these rights to others.” Notice that you are protecting your work, but not the ideas behind the work.
The following types of work are protected by copyright.
  1. Original literary works (novels, instruction manuals, computer programs, lyrics for songs, articles in newspapers, some types of databases, but not names or titles)
  2. Original dramatic works, including works of dance or mime
  3. Original musical works
  4. Original artistic works, e.g. paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures, collages, works of architecture, technical drawings, diagrams, maps, logos
  5. Published editions of works, i.e. the typographical arrangement of a publication
  6. Sound recordings, which may be recordings on any medium, e.g. tape or compact disc, and may be recordings of other copyright works, e.g. musical or literary
  7. Films, including videos
  8. Broadcasts.
The moment you commit a creative endeavor to paper or web, CD or computer file, it is copyrighted. The mark shown above is a warning to your viewers that the work is protected.
Copyright law provides a limited use clause called “fair use.” This is a loophole through which free libraries, educators, universities, commentators, bloggers, critics, and journalists may quote with proper attribution, from a copyrighted work. The definition of what exactly constitutes fair use is a murky topic that is still being debated in courts.

source : Freelancer
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