Are you an artist or creative worker who has dealt with an issue related to copyright?

As defined by the U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright is a type of intellectual property (IP) that gives the creator of an original work the right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform that work for a limited time.

To protect their livelihoods, artists must learn how to protect their work from copyright infringement, as well as other lesser-known copyright claims that can impact an artist’s livelihood such as noninfringement and misrepresentation.

Before the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) was created in 2020, smaller independent artists often did not have many cost or time-effective options to seek legal action when experiencing issues related to their own intellectual property (IP). This is why the CCB was created: to answer an urgent need – the large volume of copyright claims and the limited amount of resources (time, expertise, money) available to creators to make those claims in federal court.

However, even with this new resource for protecting artists, there are still many ways artists issues can fall through the cracks. Help us understand your stories related to copyright. What issues are you dealing with? What systems are out there that you are falling through? What potential copyright issues are keeping you up at night? We want to hear from you!

Thank you so much for sharing your story! We will use these examples to shape our advocacy, research, and resources on this topic, and may reach out to you for more information, or to let you know about opportunities to advance social and economic protections for all.