"I tend to think that we should become less dependent on Copyrights. If I am an artist and create a piece of work, if someone steals it and starts to profit from it, I should be able to bring charges against them with my original piece of work as all the evidence I need to prove my ownership."

One of the things about Copyright law is that if you place a copyright notice on your work such as ©2012 James Percy for instance, this provides legal notice to any would be thief. When you register your work – which is very inexpensive – you can establish a prima facie case and are entitled to damages for losses. Thus the present copyright system is favorable to artists including photographers and enables you to be able to show the world that the work belongs to you. Thus there can be no innocent infringement. Moreover, you would be entitled to damages. If there were any. That being said it makes it easier to prosecute copyright infringement. In essence Copyright law is your friend. It helps you to enforce your intellectual property rights and helps you to collect damages. Having no copyright means that you have to prove ownership of the intellectual property, you have to prove that you created the work before another (if there is a dispute about similar work) and you have to prove damages without a presumption of damages. Although this is a general discussion of the law, I think we should remember that Copyright law is already on the books and can be very helpful to artists in protecting their work and establishing rights of ownership. I don't think the answer is to forgo copyrights on your work.

I appreciate your thoughts on this issue +James Percy. I just wanted to use your comment as a starting point to discuss this issue since sometimes people don't necessarily understand what a copyright means to them in terms of benefits and prevention. I hope you don't mind.

Additionally with regard to enforcement – when one registers a copyright – oftentimes a cease and desist letter will accomplish what is needed. No one is going to be able to enforce every violation of copyright. There is a certain amount that will always be out there. Partially it is a cost of doing business. Also there may be issues with international enforcement and jurisdictional issues. So to a certain extent there will be limits on what can be done. Another question I think is that even with enforcement would a person have purchased from you? Maybe, maybe not. The main thing I believe is that you have to concentrate on building relationships and business connections with persons and entities who will pay for your time and talent and intellectual property. That is where you need to concentrate your time if you are a small business person. Worrying about some infringement that might happen is pointless and generally non-productive. At the present time I believe we have laws to assist most artists already on the books. One questions would be – do we need more? And, if so what do we need?

Kim

This is not specifically about SOPA, but SOPA is a direct response to an ongoing issue. SOPA is a wake up call. Even if it is defeated, similar attempts may not be, and I assure you that those attempts are not going to just suddenly subside because of some websites going dormant for a day.