How can I protect images of my original artwork that I post on social media channels. I’m happy for people to share my work as long as they link back to me and credit me as the artist.
The first thing to note is that as the creator of an original work, you are the owner of the copyright and that even without a copyright notice on your original work, if people share it or otherwise use it, this is an infringement of your copyright, for which you could take action.
However, a big part of social media is in people sharing your work so that more people get to know about you. The best way to ensure that you are credited is to include your Instagram account or Twitter account name (ideally they would be the same) and a copyright notice onto the actual image itself. The copyright notice would be © followed by your name and the date in which the copyright was created. This can be in fairly small font at the bottom of the image so as not to detract from the image.
The other thing that I would do is to add to your bio a statement to the following effect “I own the copyright in the artwork shown on this account. You may only share an image from this account if you credit me as the artist and link to [insert the link you want people to go to]. We take infringement of our copyright seriously and will take full legal action to protect it.”
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