The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA), a North American trade association representing the interests of the image licensing industry, has prepared a power point presentation that it will make available to the public that educates users of images as well as visual artists on the basics of copyright. Using the Copyright Act, images from real case examples, and images provided by members for discussion purposes, it walks you through what copyright protects and for how long, illustrating topics such as fair use, what is an infringement and what is not, and how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to remove infringing works from the internet. It is geared to non-lawyers and is presented in a clear and informative way. Slide notes are included to make it easy for anyone to take the presentation to a design class, an ad agency or any other interested organization. The presentation is prepared by Nancy E. Wolff, counsel to PACA and the leading authority in the area of image licensing and the law.

The PowerPoint presentation is intended as an overview to teach the basics of copyright and how it applies to image licensing. It is complete with speaker notes and visual samples supplied by PACA members. A section at the end discusses the enforcement of copyright on the Internet. The presentation is available for download for teaching purposes on a royalty-free basis provided you attribute it to PACA. You may not repackage or sell the presentation. You are free to include your own examples and anecdotes. It takes about an hour to and hour and a half to present depending on audience questions. If you only have an hour, slides 53 through 59 relate to copyright enforcement, registration and DMCA issues and can be skipped if you run out of time as they are a discrete section. Please check the version you use with the PACA Web site before each use as it will be updated as the laws change.  The current document version is "PACA Copyright 080108." If you're having difficultly downloading the presentation using the button above, you can click here to access the file directly.