Research Guides: Copyright and Fair Use: Copyright

Simply Put ...

Copyright is protection provided by law (title 17, U.S. Code) and is automatically applicable to anyone who:

Produces a work in tangible form that can be either seen, read, or heard

Can prove originality

Demonstrates the work is created with at least a minimal level of creativity

Types of works protected by copyright include:

literary works -- musical works -- dramatic works -- choreographic works -- pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works -- sound recordings -- architectural works

What is not protected by copyright?

facts or ideas -- titles, names, short phrases, or slogans -- procedures, methods, systems or processes -- works of the United States government -- works that have passed into the public domain

In the Beginning...

Johannes of Speyer's Printing Monopoly, Venice, 1469
"It is not so much printing as the existence of a market in books and ideas that introduced concepts of intellectual property. As the literary market increased in importance, authors, who might well be writing for a living and competing for recognition, began to stress the distinctiveness of their products, in other words their intellectual or literary originality."
The link above goes to a summary of the document ("Record". To read a translation of the document itself, click on "Translatio
Selected Extracts from the Stationers' Company's Register, excerpt, 1554
Humble Remonstrance of the Stationers' Company, London, 1643
Defoe's Essay on the Press, 1704
Treatise in which Daniel Defoe sets out his arguments concerning the importance of maintaining a free press, as well as the need to provide for a statutory protection to prevent the 'press-piracy' of published books.
Statute of Anne, 1710
Full Title: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies"
Donaldson v. Becket, 1774
Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)
Digital archive of primary sources on copyright from the invention of the printing press (c. 1450) to the Berne Convention (1886) and beyond.

Did You Know?

The authority to establish Copyright Law comes from the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8?

One major purpose of Copyright Law is to “promote the progress of the sciences and useful arts”?

U.S. Copyright Law

Subject to section 106, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

U.S. Code, Chapter 17: Copyright

Copyright Law

Copyright Watch: Global Transparency in Copyright Law
Is It Protected By Copyright? Digital Copyright Slider
Use this to determine whether the material you'd like to use is covered by copyright laws (for works published in the U.S.).
DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT
The Act is divided in to five "titles," the DMCA is a complex act that addresses a number of issues that are of concern to libraries. Among its many provision, the Act:

* imposes rules prohibiting the circumvention of technological protection measures
* sets limitations on copyright infringement liability for online service providers (OSPs)
* expands an existing exemption for making copies of computer programs
* provides a significant updating of the rules and procedures regarding archival preservation
* mandates a study of distance education activities in networked environments
* mandates a study of the effects of anti-circumvention protection rules on the "first sale" doctrine

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Essay: How Copyright Got a Bad Name For Itself

"...Copyright is in bad odor these days. Many of the developments over the last years designed to protect copyright have drawn academic scorn, and intolerance even from the popular press. I have a theory about how copyright got a bad name for itself, and I can summarize it in one word: Greed.

"Corporate greed and consumer greed. Copyright owners, generally perceived to be large, impersonal and unlovable corporations (the human creators and interpreters - authors and performers - albeit often initial copyright owners, tend to vanish from polemical view), have eyed enhanced prospects for global earnings in an increasingly international copyright market. Accordingly, they have urged and obtained ever more protective legislation, that extends the term of copyright and interferes with the development and dissemination of consumer-friendly copying technologies.

"Greed, of course, runs both ways. Consumers, for their part, have exhibited an increasing rapacity in acquiring and "sharing" unauthorized copies of music, and more recently, motion pictures. Copyright owners' attempts to tame technology notwithstanding, at least some of the general public senses as illegitimate any law, or more particularly, any enforcement that gets in the way of what people can do with their own equipment in their own homes (or dorm rooms). Worse, they would decry this enforcement as a threat to the Constitutional goal of promotion of the Progress of Science, and thus a threat to the public interest."

Introduction to the article, Essay--How Copyright Got a Bad Name For Itself, by Jane C. Ginsburg

Read the essay, posted on the Social Science Research Network