Creative Copyrights

There's been a huge outcry in recent years about American copyright law, sparked, I think, by the emergence of music downloads and the ease of burning CDs (and fueled by the ham-handed reaction of the RIAA), but affecting everything that is subject to copyright. I've not actually paid much attention to copyright law for years. My own work is copyrighted under the terms of existing law, but I've just begun investigating Creative Commons. It looks interesting, but from my own standpoint, I don't know that it's going to work for me. Any income I derive from my work -- the photographs, mainly -- is predicated on sale of physical prints or reproduction rights. It appears as though a Creative Commons license will impact this in some way, but I'm not sure. (Wading through the FAQ even as we speak.)

For example, if I sell a print, I sell only the physical object; I retain all other rights, including reproduction, so that if someone contacts the owner of the print asking to use it as an illustration, the owner has to refer them to me. I'm the only one who can legally grant permission. It appears as though a Creative Commons license will keep that intact, and doesn't affect the sale of prints at all.

Actually, as I read more, it starts to look doable. I may license all the work at a/k/a Hunter under a CC license.

Intellectual property law is something that, as you might expect, concerns me a great deal. I'm not convinced that current law is as dysfunctional as the "total access" side claims -- after all, it's my work, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't make money from it. A lot of the instant-public-domain arguments seem to be coming from those who want to make money off someone else's work. I've never found the licensing requirements of copyright law all that restrictive, although that can be dependent on who holds the rights.

Another research project. Just what I needed.