© :o

Designing a Digital Portfolio, Chapter 12

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As important as copyright is, especially is this field, it's just such a dry topic. It is good information to know, but just so boring to read and write about. To sum up most of it, there are a lot of things you aren't supposed to do with work that's not yours, it would be easy to get away with some of them, but that doesn't mean you should. If you think you need permission to use something, you probably do, and if you can't get it, it's better to be safe than sorry. This all starts getting a little tricky when it comes to work you've done for others. Depending on the contract or your employment status, you may not retain the rights to the work you've done, not even to put something in your portfolio. This is something to look out for when you negotiating a particular job.

The other side of this is of course if someone tried to infringe upon your copyrighted material. While it's nice to know that someone likes your work enough to copy it, you probably don't want to see it happen. There are forms to fill out and file with the government for copyright protection, technologies to use (which can often be annoying) to protect your digital work, or you can simply make only low quality copies available.

 

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As for a link this week, all this talk of copyright makes me think of Creative Commons, because sharing can be nice sometimes.