How do you get copyright on a piece of artwork?

Question: How do you get copyright on a piece of artwork!?

my mum paints and wants to produce prints from originals to sell how do we put copyright ont her artwork !? we live in Australia if that makes a difference to the law!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Good news, your Mum already owns the copyright!

If you have made an original piece of art, then you automatically own the copyright on that art, but it might be hard to prove it if someone rips you off!.!.!.

In 163 countries copyright exists the moment you make something original, like a book or script or a song or a painting!. This is called the Berne Convention!.

The problem is when someone rips you off and then you have to prove that the copyright was yours and not someone elses!. It's not good enough to have a dated version on your own or a friends computer or send it in a letter because you could easily alter that!. It has to be independent!.

You can upload them to a special webpage and they fingerprint them and record the time you uploaded!. This means that you have an independent record showing when you made it!.

In the US, they have a copyright office, but other countries don't need that and just use the Berne convention instead!.

You can use an international online service called http://www!.provemycopyright!.com!. You get an account with 5Gb of space to upload lots of your images such as scanned in versions of the artwork or photographs of it, even if they are in demo or work in progress format!. When you make a new version, you can just upload that one too and it doesn't cost you anything extra!.

PMC kind of acts like an independent third party which helps to prove that you were in control of the copyright before you send it off to a publisher or post it on the web for sale!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I don't really know, but there must be some legal documents to make your signature a copytright!. Try asking your town hall or someone you know who uses copyrights!.Www@QuestionHome@Com