Copyrights on digital artworks

This study aims to examine the impact of digital technologies on art and copyrights in perspective of international regulations and court decisions, and to propose concrete suggestions for steps that can be taken within the framework of Turkish Copyright legislation by defining the legal framework of digital art. In line with this objective, the process of digital transformation in art has first been reviewed from a historical perspective. The differences between concepts such as digital art, digital artworks, digitized artworks, digital artistic production, and crypto art have been highlighted; and the roles of blockchain technology and NFTs in artistic production, as well as the roles of artificial intelligence and generative AI systems in this transformation, have been discussed. The processes through which digital data transform into art works or artistic production, the roles of digital data sets and data libraries, and the effects of text and data mining on copyrights have also been analyzed. The place of digital art works and digital artistic productions within copyright regulations has been examined, and the applicability of copyrights to these works has been debated. The issues of the legal status and ownership of works produced by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence and NFTs have been addressed. In particular, the effects of human and AI contributions on creative processes have been evaluated within the framework of the fundamental concepts of copyrights, especially in terms of the originality, charactersitics, and creativity required for products generated by AI to be recognized as works. Finally, the applicability of moral and economic rights of the author to digital environments has been examined. The application of these rights to digital artistic productions with contested legal status, digital voice and visual clones, crypto art productions, and NFTs has been comprehensively assessed. Considering the challenges posed by the unique nature of digital art, the applicability of copyright protection to digital art has been examined in light of international regulations and court decisions, and concrete proposals have been presented for Turkish copyright legislation.