The Questions

All of my questions are concerned with the nuances of copyrights. “The holder of a copyright owns the particular expression of an idea, but not the underlying idea or method of operation.” (Beatty 505) As a photographer who plans to go into business for himself, copyright laws and their protections are essential to the success of my business.  “A work is copyrighted automatically once it is in tangible form. For example, when a songwriter puts notes on paper, the work is copyrighted without further ado. But if she whistles a happy tune without writing it down, the song is not copyrighted, and anyone else can use it without permission.”(Beatty 505) The legal questions that plagued me the most were those that concerned whether or not I had copyright protection because my work is an image and not written work, “Unlike patents, the ideas underlying copyrighted material need not be novel. For example, three movies—Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa, and Freaky Friday—are about a parent and child who switch bodies. The movies all have the same plot, but there is no copyright violation because their expressions of the basic idea are different.”(Beatty 505), whether or not I needed to copyright every single picture I took,  “Registration with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is necessary only if the holder wishes to bring suit to enforce the copyright.”(Beatty 505) and in what situations I could file a claim of copyright infringement on a person using my images without my permission. “Anyone who uses copyrighted material without permission is violating the Copyright Act. To prove a violation, the plaintiff must present evidence that the work was original and that either: The infringer actually copied the work; or The infringer had access to the original and the two works are substantially similar”. (Beatty 507) My conversation with Attorney Hunter led me to some interesting answers.