hannahhoffman+Spring+17

= = = About Me = **Name-** Hannah Hoffman **Major-** Undecided- Leaning towards Interior Architecture and Design **Experience with computer software-** Took digital art 1 and 2 senior year of high school. **Experience with art-** Taken various art classes in high school along with courses at local art centers and FIT over the summer. **Fun fact-** I am one of four girls! **Artistic Interests-** Photography, Drawing, Digital Art, Pottery, Dance

=__ Homework Week 1 __= I believe that copyright and trademark laws are extremely important for protecting people's hard work. At the same time these laws have many loopholes, which can make producing any type of art very constricting and time consuming. Although these laws are meant to help safeguard people's work, it seems like a lot of the rules that must be followed end in an expense from the artist. It is hard for someone to have creative freedom and express the message they would like to portray, when heavy amount of content they would like to be able to show is restricted.

I never thought too deeply about copyright laws until very recently. Prior to reading this I had recently started a business with my sister. It is an online art boutique that curates original pieces inspired by the women's march. I take care of the graphic design and social media end of things, along with contributing a few original works to the collection. While building the brand, it was important to my sister and I that the logos and company name we created would not be taken from us and used by someone else. Each idea that we came up with was unique to us, and we did not want credit being given elsewhere. Besides wanting to make sure we had full possession of what we were producing, we also wanted to make sure we were not taking work from other people. When posting on our social media accounts I had to watch out for reposting something without giving credit where it is due and getting permission from the owner to do so. The same goes for an images that popped up on the website. My sister and I did not need to be paying fines with money we did not have. This caused us to be extra careful, and look into trademark and copyright laws during the process of creating this company.

Although I had some brief knowledge and understanding about these laws prior to this assignment, it was extremely helpful and educational to read the information provided in this comic. It will help guide my sister and I in the future with our own brand image and what we are putting out into the world. Having a brand of my own, it is important to me that someone can’t use it’s content without recognition and permission. That is why I am grateful for being able to trademark the company and copyright the artwork. On the contrary though these laws can get extremely detailed and very costly. Like the example given in the comic, how can someone produce a documentary that is meant to candidly portray New York City, if they can’t capture the true culture of the environment. A lot of the times you can only do so by putting down a good amount of money, and most artists or people can’t just throw away thousands of dollars. Although there is the possible qualification of “fair use” that doesn’t always work out. As grateful for the laws as I am, I do think the art community should somehow come together to try to reconfigure them in a more justified way.

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