Copyright, permissions, licensing and how to use specific content - Illustrator Tutorial

During the exam, you will also be asked a few questions about the legal aspects of graphic design work, which mainly focuses on the type of copyright, permissions and licensing required to use specific content. Now, don't worry, you don't have to be a lawyer to understand these terms, they are fairly simple and straightforward. And there's only a couple of key terms that you need to be familiar with, which keeps coming up in the exam. So first, let's just clarify what is copyright. It is a legal protection that gives creators ownership over their original work, including designs, illustrations, logos, and layouts. As soon as you create a design, you automatically own the rights to it, and others can't copy, use, or modify it without your permission. So why does this matter? Because your work is protected from being stolen or reused without credit or payment. It also means that you as a designer will need permission or a license to use other people's work so for instance if you want to include a photo, use a font or an icon or a template for a project that you're working on you always have to make sure that you have the rights or the permission to use them. So in a nutshell if you made it you own it, if someone else made it you need permission. Now when it comes to generative AI right now there is no clear protection for the copyrighted work that is shared online because for these generative AI models to work they have to scrape the internet and devour anything that they can find. So we are talking about billions of images and most of the big companies like Midjourney or OpenAI, CreatedChatGPT will either ignore or try to hide the fact that they included millions of copyrighted work in their training data and the reason why they can get away with this or still continue to do this is because it is very hard to trace back the original copyrighted work because they are not sharing or being transparent about what was used in the training data. Don't worry in the exam they won't ask you questions about generative AI it's just something that I am quite passionate about and it's a gray area really when it comes to how copyright is handled. But let's move on and talk about the next important term public domain. So this refers to creative materials not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark or patent and in this case the public owns the work not an individual author or artist. And compared to copyrighted work anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission. Derivative work would be considered something that was altered or was based on some other original work. So that means that you've taken an existing piece like a logo, artwork, photo or layout and you modified it in some way like change the colors, you added some elements or you combined it with lots of other elements to create something new. But here's the catch even if you change something the original creator still owns the copyright. What that means is that you need permission to legally use or share the new version unless that original work is already in public domain or you own a license that allows you modifications. So again, to put it simply, changing a design doesn't make it yours. If it's based on someone else's work, it is still protected. Now, fair use, another important term to be familiar with is a legal rule that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission but only in specific situations like for education, commentary, news reporting or parody. But fair use is not a free pass to any image or design just because you are not making money from it and courts would usually look at four different things to decide if something is fair use or not. they would look at the purpose, so what it is intended for, the nature, so is the original work factual or creative, the amount or how much of the original work is being used and most importantly the effect whether your work will affect the original creator in any way but most importantly negatively like financially. So fair use is limited, it's case by case and it's also not guaranteed. So the best thing to do to avoid any complications is to get permission or a license to use someone else's work. Now I mentioned licensing a couple of times. This is another term you should be familiar with. So it is a way you can legally use copyrighted material by paying a fee established by the copyright holder or stock image provider for instance. You can use the copyrighted material or stock image for a specific time and in a certain way as outlined in the terms of conditions. You might also be asked about Creative Commons or CC for short which is a system that lets creators share their work with the public while keeping some rights. So instead of saying all rights reserved a designer can use a Creative Commons license to say you can use this but here's how. So this is a way to make sharing easier but you still need to follow the rules of each license. Similarly to licensing you might also need to get signed release forms if you want to use a person's likeness or a landmark in your composition. You will also need a release form if you want to include a brand name in your project especially if that brand is not owned by the client that you're working for and there's two types of specific releases that usually they ask about in the exam. One is the model release which you need if a person is recognizable in your work and the location release which is required for landmarks or private properties like Disneyland.