Yesterday's Professional Practice lecture was presented by Catherine Moffat, one of the lectures at the Ourimbah campus, on copyright.
To avoid repeating myself from last week's blog entry I will talk about an example that she used to describe how artists can be tricked into signing off the ownership of their copyright.
Say for example, some of your friends are in a band and want you to design their logo, in return they will pay you a few dollars or buy you a few drinks, or something like that and because you're friends you say ok. All is going well until your friends make it big and start touring, meaning that the original logo that you designed is now being printed on merchandise such as CD covers, t-shirts, hats etc... After seeing this, you then ask your friends if you could get some royalties, but they then tell you that they have signed their rights off to their recording company. The recording company then says that you have no rights to the image anymore because you sold it off for those few beers in the beginning.
The moral of the story is when agreeing to design something for your friends (or clients), make a licencing contract in writing, which states that you still own the copyright, but you give them permission to use your image. If one day they get famous or use your image for profit, they would then have to pay you back royalties.
Blog written for my Professional Practice class at the University of Newcastle
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