Artistic Copyright Infringement

Artistic copyright infringement is the act of stealing someone else's copyrighted intellectual materials for monetary gain, or for self promotion. An artistic copyright infringement occurs when someone's copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed or performed, or if the copyrighted material is made into a derivative work, like "Harry Potter; The Languages Used", without the express permission of the copyright holder (in this case, J.K. Rowling).

With a proper copyright in hand, not the "poor man's copyright", but one made properly through your country's Copyright Office, under the guidance of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Once you have found out that you are the victim of copyright infringement, you can have the "thief" made to stop doing what they were doing with your copyrighted works immediately. You may also be able to sue the person, group or company that is infringing upon your copyright for a major portion of any monies, or any other form of financial benefit that they gained through the unauthorized use of your copyrighted work.

The term "software piracy", which is a hot topic, and has been since the Internet started streaming audio for easy and fast downloads, is simply another term for copyright infringement. You can not download music for free and then charge people to listen to it, nor can you copy a software program and sell copies of it to other people. Both of these scenarios comprise artistic copyright infringement.

When someone uses parts of your copyrighted works for charitable purposes, it can fall under fair use. Fair use is the term given to someone, or some company using parts of copyrighted works for educational purposes, for writing critiques on the work, newspaper articles and when a very small percentage of the overall work(s) is copied. If there is no profit to be made from the copying of the copyrighted works, then it falls under the fair play provision of the copyright act.

Fair use is not a "stamped in stone" defence against artistic copyright infringement, but rather a very gray area of protecting artists from artistic copyright infringement. Since there are many situations where a portion of copyrighted works can be used by someone else in creating their own works, as long as what is used is a very small percentage of what was copyrighted, and that the copied work is not an integral part of the new work.

Know your rights. Ask a copyright lawyer for help, or contact your local Copyright Office if you think you have been the victim of artistic copyright infringement.