& Frequently Asked Questions
How Copyrights Work
When you create a work of art in any medium or media, it is your copyright as soon as you publish it. This includes all paintings, sculptures, drawings, writing, photos, digital media and more. It is your intellectual property forever until you sell that copyright or sign it over to someone else (that requires a contract signed by you and nothing less).
When you publish your work on this website or any other, it is no different than publishing it in a newspaper or magazine, and it is still 100% yours. We mark your artwork with a copyright watermark so that when it is shared, the world knows at a glance who the author/artist is. But even without that copyright watermark, it is still absolutely no different and still yours. It just helps the world to see your beautiful work and know who made it.
For more information on how your work is copyrighted here in the US, visit this URL: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
How Social Media Works
The term “social media” includes all social sharing websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, MySpace and many, many more. These websites allow people from all over the world to communicate and share anything they want. The key word is “share”, and just because someone shares your work in no way gives them rights to it. Anyone can “share” your images, but they may not profit from it in any way or use it without your permission.
For example, if someone posts a picture of your painting on Pinterest, that’s ok, and when it’s clicked on, it will lead users back to here to see the rest of your work. (this is also why we include the copyright watermark ON the image, so there’s no doubt about whose work it is) However , if somebody copies your image and say, prints it in some magazine without your permission or tries to say somewhere that that is their creation, that is illegal and they are subject to federal copyright laws and lawsuits. No matter what, nobody is allowed to reproduce your work without your permission.
That being said, this is the internet, and there are certain realities that should be understood when you put things online in any way. There will be people out there who may indeed misuse your work, or print it out or in some other way illegally copy it. If you spot this occurring, you can take action against that person, or issue a warning or talk to an attorney, who can tell you more. In all likelihood, the chances of that happening aren’t terribly high, but it does happen and you must realize that before you post your work online. This applies to everything and anything you post online, from an opinion on a news website to your favorite painting on this website, so if you’re not comfortable with that, then don’t do it. Better safe than sorry! However, this is a wonderful way to share your talent with the world and we all want to encourage that, so we are protecting your work as much as we can with watermarks, meta tags, image captions and more.
How to Print the Newsletter
If you would like to print out the newsletter, just click on the link that says “To print, click here,” followed by the title of the newsletter in blue. When you click on the blue title, a pdf document will download to your computer (some of you may know this as an “attachment,” but the action that is happening is a download, which just means the file is transferring from this website to your computer). When the download is finished, just open the file and the newsletter will open in Adobe Reader for you to print out at your leisure.
To download a free version of Adobe Reader, please visit https://www.acrobat.com .
Worried about Viruses?
Viruses are a pain! Protect yourself with a good anti-virus software. Products such as MalwareBytes are free and effective for not just curing viruses, but also for scanning files that you’ve downloaded before you open them. Important note: If you are using an Apple computer/Mac, you don’t need to worry about viruses, as they practically don’t exist on Mac machines. The viruses that destroy Windows machines do not work on a Mac, so don’t worry about it!
Here is a list of anti-virus software that has an excellent record and is good to have. (click to visit the sites)
(Norton is also an option, but the software listed above is better since it will not make your computer as slow as Norton tends to do while offering just as much protection. Just a good tip!)