3 What is Copyright?

Big Question and Why It Matters   

Why do we have laws that restrict the copying and sharing of creative work? How do those laws operate in the context of the Internet, where nearly everything we do involves making a copy?

Copyright is an important area of law, one that reaches into nearly every facet of our lives, whether we know it or not. Acts that are not regulated by copyright, like lending a friend a physical book, become regulated by copyright when the acts are translated to an online environment, (sharing the same book on the internet). Because almost everything we do online involves making a copy, copyright is a regular feature in our lives.

Copyright grants a set of exclusive rights to creators. These protections ensure that no one else can copy, distribute, translate, remix, perform, adapt, or otherwise use the work in violation of these exclusive rights.

Copyright provides the creator the means to control the use of their own works by others. However, this does not always mean the author, painter, musician, etc. controls the rights to the works.

For example, work created during the course of employment may be subject to varying degrees of ownership. In the United States, a doctrine commonly known as “work for hire” states that copyrightable works created within the scope of employment, the employer is the owner and controls the economic rights to the copyrighted works. The same may apply for independent contractors, teachers, university faculty, and even learners.

A work that has been co-created may also fall into a category of joint ownership of a work. This type of co-ownership still provides the protection of copyright but the requires the owners to be held accountable to one another for the uses of their works.

Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not ideas or facts themselves. While copyright grants the control over an expression of an idea, it does not grant control over the idea of the expression.

Copyright is generally granted automatically, in the United States, at the moment a work is fixed in a tangible format. While registration is not necessary, registering your copyright with a local copyright authority will allow you to officially record your authorship. In some countries, this may be a necessary step in copyright.

Copyright protections last until the death of the creator plus 70 years (in the United States). After this time, the work will enter the public domain.

“Copyright Law”/ Sub Unit 2 by Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Image: This work is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship.