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The artist always has copyright of any images of their artwork. If you wish to use an image of an artwork on another website, or if you wish to reproduce it in any other way, you must have permission from the artist and the artist must be acknowledged as the copyright owner in any reproduction. Who has copyright of an artwork after purchase? In Australia, copyright lasts for the life of the creator plus 50 years. Copyright is a bundle of rights, which include economic and moral rights, protected in law, which both prevents other people from making unauthorised use of a work and which can also provide the artist with additional economic gain from their work. The main authority for Australian copyright law is the Copyright Act 1968 ("the Act"), which is a Commonwealth law and applies throughout every state in Australia. Recently the Federal Government amended the Act to protect the utilisation or reproduction and communication of works on the Internet by approving the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 which came into force on 4 March 2001. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their material form. In Australia copyright protection is automatic and there is no need to register copyright. Thanks to international treaties such as the Berne Convention, most foreign copyright owners are protected in Australia, and Australian copyright owners are protected in most other countries. If you want to know which countries do not have copyright laws, contact the Australian Copyright Council.
In Australia, moral rights legislation was passed by federal parliament and came into force early in 2001. It ensures: • the right of artists to have their art work attributed to them It also ensures that any consent to waive moral rights would be invalidated by artists being placed under duress, or as the result of false or misleading statements. In relation to public art, the legislation requires that if the environment to which an artistic work is affixed is to be changed or destroyed, the artist must be notified so they have the opportunity to document the work in situ and be consulted over what will happen to the work.
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