Evan M Butterfield

About Evan M Butterfield

For over thirty years, Evan Butterfield, MA, JD, has been focused on explaining copyright law to non-lawyer audiences. In 2022, Evan decided to put all that experience to good use. He wrote and published "Copyright for Creatives: A Comprehensive Guide to Copyright Law for Creative People Who Make Stuff." The plain-language, easy-to-read, 250-page book covers:

Part One: The basics of copyight law: what it is, what it isn't, and what constitutes fair use and educational use
Part Two: In-depth discussions of over 50 different specific creative activities, projects, and platforms, including drawing, comedy, dance, fan art & fan fiction,graphic design, music, needlework, photography, and social media content creation--along with much more!
Part Three: A walk-through of the copyright registration process (and how to decide whether or not to register), an introduction to Open Access, and overviews of trademark and patent law, which can sometimes protect what copyright won't.

While at Kaplan Professional Publishing (where he was Publisher and VP of Product Development), Evan gave regular formal presentations about copyright law to industry, educatior, and government audiences, and published award-winning articles on (what he strangely believes is a fascinating) subject.

At the IEEE Computer Society, where he was Director of Products & Services and Interim Director of Marketing, Evan continued to give famously funny lectures on copyright issues at conferences in the US and abroad, as well as writing on the topic in blogs and helping develop licensing and open access policies.

In 2018-2020, Evan designed and taught a copyright and trademark course for the Art Institute of Las Vegas, to educate creative professionals about copyright law.

Since 2020, Evan has been teaching an online criminal intellectual property course at Arizona State University that he conceived, designed, and built.

Finally, Evan is a creative person himself. He has been publishing, displaying, and occasionally selling his own photography for several years, so there’s a personal interest for him in ensuring that people understand and respect copyright, as well as the more academic interest. Evan lives on the western edge of Las Vegas, Nevada, with his husband and a cat. More about Evan and "Copyright for Creatives" at https://www.copyrightforcreatives.com and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4K1BWVR.