Copyright some thoughts

I would like to share some thoughts about copyrights this time.

As an author myself this topic is important to me. When you create a piece of work yourself, using time, talent and money, you want to get a value out of it. For me this value is just a payment for the photo shoot. For other people and companies it may be a license to allow use of this work under certain conditions.

That's why it is important to have your work protected, so the author would get paid for the work that he deserves to get paid for.

There are different copyright laws in different countries. The copyright law has been active for many years and originally was implemented for licensing the terms for copying books, but eventually was extended to cover other original work: music, photographs, paintings and allot more.

The most important milestone in Copyright law, is the Berne Convention, it is international agreement that regulates copyright laws in most countries in the world. Basically original work, created in one country will be recognized in another and the same copyright protection laws will be applied.

There is also one thing worth noting, The copyright remains valid for the duration of the author life and some time after the death of the author. It can be 25,50 and even more years. After this time, the work will be moved to the Public domain and will be available for everyone for any use and free of charge.


Well it all sounds pretty good, but there is one exception. Sometimes when we are dealing with big money and huge corporations the laws can be influenced and changed by lobbyists.

One famous typical example is Mickey Mouse Protection Act

The Mickey Mouse was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and voiced by Walt Disney.

However with the introduction of Mickey Mouse Protection Act has ensured that works such as the early Mickey Mouse cartoons will remain under copyright until at least 2023. For example the original Copyright Act of 1790 extended this time to 14 years after the death of the author, but with the new law it was extended to 70 years !

There is no guarantee that it won't get extended even further, it is just so easy to buy the law these times !

The problem is that you cannot derive any works from the copyrighted work if you don't have a permission or rights. But what would have happened if people had a chance to use it in their works, maybe something great could come up from it !