A brief intro to copyright
- by Brad Templeton
This document is here because many people read my
original article on copyright myths without knowing very much about what copyright is to
begin with. This article is not about to teach you all about copyright,
though there are some decent sites out there with lots of details,
including:
The BasicsCopyright law secures for the creator of a creative effort
the exclusive right to control who can make copies, or make works derived
from the original work. There are a lot of subtleties and international
variations but that's the gist of it. If you create something, and it fits
the definition of a creative work, you get to control who can make copies of
it and how they make copies.
You can also sell or license this right, or, if you do the
work for somebody who hired you to do it, they buy this right in advance.
Creative WorkThe first big issue involves defining what it is to make a
creative work. The law requires that it exist in some tangible form -- it
can't just be in your head or sailing through the ether, it has to be on
disk, paper, carved in stone (sculpture) or the like. It has to be creative
(that's a tough one for lawyers to define) and that means it can't just be
factual data. But just about anything you write in English (or C++) is going
to be a creative work, anything you photograph or sculpt or draw or record.
(What you say isn't copyrighted until it's put onto tape -- it has to be in
tangible form.) Anything you write and post to USENET is almost certainly a
creative, copyrightable work. Anything you post-process with a computer
(like object code) is a derivative work, still copyrighted.
You can also do creative editing or collecting work. So
that while facts can't be copyrighted, clever organization of the facts can
be. This is called a compilation copyright and it's somewhat complex.
There are some specific exceptions in some countries.
Fonts as printed on paper can't be copyrighted for historical reasons.
Nothing done by the U.S. government can be copyrighted inside the USA.
And of course you can't copyright something somebody else
did without their permission, or derive your work from their work.
Making copiesIn its simplest form making copies is making copies.
Computers have added some recent complications, like the temporary copies in
packet buffers or on screens, and copies left on backup tape. But you can go
pretty far by assuming that just about any computerized operation on a work
involves copying it.
And simply, the copyright holder gets to say if you can do
this. But that's where it all gets modified by the issues of ...
CommerceMost of copyright has to do with commerce. In fact, one major
reason it's there is that most people believe that if you let people have
copyrights and make money from them, it strongly encourages the creation and
exploitation of creative works, which is a good thing in most people's book.
Copyright is also about control of one's creations -- particularly in most
non-U.S. countries which explicitly recognize "moral copyrights."
But still, commerce is king. So while a copyright holder
can stop you from copying something, usually they would much rather find
some way to charge you for copying it. So while some worry that copyright
can give rather strong powers to the author, the truth is that the market
brings it all into balance.
It also means that to be enforced, copyrights have to have
some commercial value. Nobody sane is going to file lawsuits over things
like ordinary e-mail messages and USENET postings that have minimal
commercial value, if any. You should, however, try to comply with the wishes
of authors.
You also have to watch it on USENET and the web. These are
no longer tiny places. Posting here is honest-to-goodness publication,
sometimes to an audience of hundreds of thousands if not millions. You can
seriously damage the commercial value of something by giving it free to such
a large audience, all with the touch of a button.
Fair Use / Fair Dealing
There is a complex doctrine associated with copyright law
which allows certain types of copying without permission in areas where it
is felt that some more important social principles would be violated
otherwise.
The "fair use" doctrine (fair dealing in Canada and some
other nations) in its purest form, lets a film critic include a clip from a
film in her review to illustrate a point. Since negative critics would never
get permission to do this, the fair use exemption exists to stop copyright
law from being used to stifle criticism.
This means that if you are doing things like comment on a
copyrighted work, making fun of it, teaching about it or researching it, you
can make some limited use of the work without permission. For example you
can quote excerpts to show how poor the writing quality is. You can teach a
course about T.S. Eliot and quote lines from his poems to the class to do
so. Some people think fair use is a wholesale license to copy if you don't
charge or if you are in education, and it isn't. If you want to republish
other stuff without permission and think you have a fair use defense, you
should read the more detailed discussions of the subject you will find
through the links above.
To use the netThere's a pretty simple rule when it comes to the net. If you
didn't write it, and you want to reproduce it, ask the creator. Most people
don't really need to know much more than this. If you do, check the other
documents.
Some legal basics
Under the Berne copyright convention, which almost all major
nations have signed, every creative work is copyrighted the moment it is
fixed in tangible form. No notice is necessary, though it helps legal cases.
No registration is necessary, though it's needed later to sue. The copyright
lasts until 50 years after the author dies. Facts and ideas can't be
copyrighted, only expressions of creative effort. |
