Artistic Aura includes both public domain and copyrighted works of art. The copyrighted works are presented under the Fair Use Provision of the Copyright Act. My goal is to assure copyright owners realize financial benefit from the availability of their images in Artistic Aura.
Please familiarize yourself with the limitations on use of the images and the definitions of copyright, public domain and Fair Use. Further information is available online at various web resources.
Except for Art History images which were obtained from Mark Harden's Artchives, the original artwork and photographs contained within Artistic Aura are the sole property of Artistic Aura and/or the artist who created them. They are embedded with a watermark and have been otherwise distorted so that any attempt to download the images for unauthorized use will produce less than satisfactory results. If you wish to own a copy of the artwork or its original, contact Artistic Aura or the artist who produced the work. Links to individual pages of this website are welcome and encouraged as long as they are properly cited as follows: Artistic Aura
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
First, a disclaimer that I am not an intellectual property attorney, and the information below is just what I have informally learned regarding copyright of art images...
Art copyright falls into two categories under the Berne Convention, copyrighted works and public domain works:
If the artist is alive or has been dead less than seventy years all rights to reproductions of his or her work reside with the artist or estate. A couple of good starting points for obtaining rights are:
Artists Rights Society
65 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012
(212) 420-9160
VAGA
Visual Artists and Galleries Association, Inc.
350 Fifth Avenue Suite 6305
New York, New York 10018
(212) 736-6666
(212) 746-6767 Fax
email: rpanzer.vaga@erols.com
The Fair Use Provision of the Copyright Act. This Provision states:
"§107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -"The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."
- "1.the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;"
- "2.the nature of the copyrighted work;
- "3.the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;"
- "and
- "4.the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
If the artist has been dead more than seventy years, his or her work is in the public domain. Reproduction rights are then concerned with rights held by those who have produced photographs of the works (in other words, if you took a snapshot of a public domain work yourself, you could do anything you want with it). Normally, museums have commissioned photographs of their works and thus hold the rights to these photographs to be used in reproduction. So, a first step here would be to contact the museum where the work is held.
The best sources for licensing rights to public domain works are Art Resource and The Bridgeman Art Library.
Art Resource "is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive stock photo archives singularly devoted to fine art. We have access to over 3 million images ranging in time periods from the prehistoric to the present and from practically every location around the world."
The Bridgeman Art Library "is the world's most comprehensive source of fine art images for reproduction. Our international collection represents more than 800 museums, galleries and contemporary artists and is growing daily to provide you with inspiring images, from the world's greatest masterpieces to previously unpublished treasures."
The best web site for copyright information is Benedict O'Mahoney's The Copyright Website.
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