What is meant by the term 'copyright'?

Question

In other words what does it mean to copyright something you've written, or how and when is something you have written copyrighted?

Answer 1

Shortened it a bit, but still, please pardon the length.

COPYRIGHT: Protection that covers published and unpublished literary, scientific and artistic works, whatever the form of expression, provided such works are fixed in a tangible or material form. This means that if you can see it, hear it and/or touch it - it may be protected. If it is an essay, if it is a play, if it is a song, if it is a funky original dance move, if it is a photograph, HTML coding or a computer graphic that can be set on paper, recorded on tape or saved to a hard drive, it may be protected.

LEGAL RIGHTS: Copyright laws grant the creator the exclusive right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display the work publicly. Exclusive means only the creator of such work, not anybody who has access to it and decides to grab it.

START; REQUIREMENTS: Copyright protection begins when any of the above described work is actually created and fixed in a tangible form. For example, a musician living in the US writes new lyrics, prints them out on paper, signs his name at the bottom with the Copyright © symbol to show that he is the author, places it in an envelope and mails it to himself without opening it. His copyright begins at the moment he puts his idea in a tangible form by printing the lyrics out on paper. He creates proof when he mails it to himself - the postmark establishes the date of creation. He then registers his copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office which is a requirement in order to sue for monetary damages should a violation of his copyright arise. However, if somebody copies and redistributes his lyrics without permission before his copyright is registered, he still has the right to assert a copyright claim as the true author.

The above applies to digital art and graphics. Open a gif, jpg or png file that you created and look at the properties. It states the date that you saved it to your hard drive as the date of creation. If somebody copies a graphic from your web site, the date of creation on your copy of the file is earlier than the copy taken off your web site. If that still doesn't feel like enough proof for you, save everything to a floppy disk and mail it to yourself via certified mail. Keep the envelope sealed, wrap it in protective plastic and put it in a safe place.

Is it "illegal" to place the copyright © symbol next to your name if you have not registered your copyright. Unless you have stolen the work from somebody else and you are not the true author of the work, it is not illegal to place the copyright © symbol next to your name - it is your right to do so. The proper way to place a copyright notice is: Copyright © (first date of creation) (name of owner). Like this: Copyright © 2003 John Smith.

When does Copyright Protection end, or expire?

If a copyright statement reads, "© Copyright 1998, 1999 John Smith." the dates in copyright statement refer to the dates that the material was created, not to the dates that the owner's material will expire and become public domain.

Several dates in a copyright statement simply means that certain things were created in one year and modified later. It could also mean that new things were created and added in a later year.

The Berne Convention establishes a general and minimum period that lasts the life of the author and fifty years after his (or her) death. Cinematographic works and photographic works have a minimum period of protection of 50 and 25 years upon the date of creation, respectively. This applies to any country that has signed the Berne Convention, and these are just the minimum periods of protection. A member country is entitled to establish greater periods of protection, but never less than what has been established by the Berne Convention.

This means that if a copyright statement reads, "© Copyright 1998, 1999 John Smith" and John Smith is from a country that has signed the Berne Convention, he created his works in 1998 and 1999, and his copyright is not going to expire until at least fifty years after he dies. Until that time his works are not in public domain.

Answer 2

It is the exclusive right of the creator of a creative piece to reproduce, perform, display, distribute, or make derivative works from the work. The creator of the work possesses a copyright in the work from the moment of its fixation in a tangible medium (assuming that the work is original and creative, which excludes most short phrases, slogans, and the like). Registration of a copyright provides additional protections and benefits (the ability to sue for infringement, the ability to recover attorney's fees if registered within three months of first publication, etc.) but is not necessary for the copyright to exist. To register a work, go to the US copyright site (already cited in other responses, and assuming it is US copyright you inquire about); the process is relatively simple and inexpensive.

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What is meant by the term 'copyright'?
In other words what does it mean to copyright something you've written, or how and when is something you have written copyrighted?

Answer 4

What Is Meant By Copyright

Answer 5

Once you wrote it, it is already copyrighted. You can use the copyright symbol with your name next to it.

Now, you can also register your work with the US Copyright Office in DC. This is just giving them a copy which they put in their storage. It is $30. This is wise as it is "proof" that it is your work, in case any lawsuits come up.

But it is important to know that you don't need to register your work with them to use the copyright symbol. It is copyrighted immediately you are done with the work.


JAYCIE has the most correct answer. The person with the long answer just violated the copyright laws by plagiarizing - no source was mentioned.

Answer 6

It means what it sounds like. You own the rights to the copy if you have it copyrighted. The international standard is the Berne Convention, which concluded that everyone deserves intellectual property rights just by virtue of having created the work -- that means you would have rights to claim and protect your work from plagiarism regardless of having it officially documented. That's what people are talking about when they say that all you have to do is write copyrighted by so-and-so on such-and-such date on any given manuscript to copyright it. But, in the US, that won't hold up in court since we don't follow the Berne Convention all the way. In the US, you have to submit your work for copyright to the Library of Congress with a small fee. They research it a little to satisfy themselves that you haven't committed obvious plagiarism, then they grant you copyright. Their copyright is postdated back to when the manuscript was mailed to them. You can protect yourself without a formal copyright by mailing a manuscript to yourself by certified mail, which you must not open until you take it to a judge if you go to sue someone for stealing it, but this will only prevent them from publishing it/continuing to publish it without your permission. In the US, if you don't have a formal copyright through the Library of Congress, you can not be awarded punitive damages if someone steals your work, even if you can prove it was yours first. All you can get is actual damages. By the way, it is actually illegal and punishable by fine to put a copyright mark on something that isn't copyrighted in the US, but it's almost never enforced.

Answer 7

a copyright is the legal ownership of something you've written. when you sign your name on something you wrote, it's automatically copyrighted, and if someone steals it or uses the idea for something else, in some cases you can sue. but you have to prove that it was yours first.

Answer 8

A copyright is a legal protection given to an author, musician, inventor, etc. to claim ownership in the use rights of something. To copyright a name means that only use can use it, and you must grant premission to someone else if they want to use it.

You can apply for copyright protection through goverment sources.

Answer 9

Basically, it means that whoever had it copyrighted is the only person who can claim ownership to the manuscript. Usually, whenever you have a work published it becomes your idea and yours alone.

Answer 10

copyright
The legal ownership of a "work," which can take any of the following forms: written text, program source code, graphics images, sculpture, music, sound recording, motion picture, pantomime, choreograph and architecture. Before January 1, 1978, a work had to be published to be copyrighted. After that date, any work expressed in paper or electronic form is automatically copyrighted for the life of the author plus 70 years. Registration with the Copyright Office is not required, although it is beneficial if there are disputes later on. In the U.S., a copyright symbol is not mandatory, but recommended.

For works by an anonymous author or an author who uses a fictitious name (pseudonymous) as well as works "made for hire," such as a publication written by an employee of a company, the copyright lasts 120 years from date of creation or 95 years from date of publication, whichever is shorter. For more information, visit www.copyright.gov. See Creative Commons, GPL, trademarks, DRM and image protection.

Other info:

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally "the right to copy" an original creation. In most cases, these rights are of limited duration. The symbol for copyright is © (Unicode U+00A9), and in some jurisdictions may alternatively be written as either (c) or (C).

Copyright may subsist in a wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms or "works". These include poems, theses, plays, and other literary works, movies, choreographic works (dances, ballets, etc.), musical compositions, audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, software, radio and television broadcasts of live and other performances, and, in some jurisdictions, industrial designs. Copyright is a type of intellectual property; designs or industrial designs may be a separate or overlapping form of intellectual property in some jurisdictions.

Copyright law covers only the particular form or manner in which ideas or information have been manifested, the "form of material expression". It is not designed or intended to cover the actual idea, concepts, facts, styles, or techniques which may be embodied in or represented by the copyright work. Copyright law provides scope for satirical or interpretive works which themselves may be copyrighted.[citation needed] See idea-expression divide.

For example, the copyright which subsists in relation to a Mickey Mouse cartoon prohibits unauthorized parties from distributing copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works which copy or mimic Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but does not prohibit the creation of artistic works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they are sufficiently different to not be imitative of the original. Other laws may impose legal restrictions on reproduction or use where copyright does not - such as trademarks and patents.

Authors, patrons, and owners of works throughout the ages have tried to direct and control how copies of such works could be used once disseminated to others. Mozart's patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, allowed his compositions created for her to be freely performed, while Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "Water Music."

Two major developments in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have provoked the development of modern copyright. First, the expansion of mercantile trade in major European cities and the appearance of the secular university helped produce an educated bourgeois class interested in the information of the day. This helped spur the emergence of a public sphere, which was increasingly served by entrepreneurial stationers who produced copies of books on demand. Second, Gutenberg's development of movable type and the development and spread of the printing press made mass reproduction of printed works quick and much cheaper than ever before. The process of copying a work could be nearly as labor intensive and expensive as creating the original, and was largely relegated to monastic scribes before printing. It appears that publishers, rather than authors, were the first to seek restrictions on the copying of printed works. Given that publishers commonly now obtain the copyright from the authors as a condition of mass reproduction of a work, one of the criticisms of the current system is that it benefits publishers more than it does authors. This is one of the chief arguments in favor of peer-to-peer file sharing systems, making an analogy with the changes wrought by printing.

An interesting attempt at copyright in the early modern period was the notice attached to the ha- Shirim asher li-Shelomo , a setting of the Psalms by the composer Salomone Rossi, which happened to be the first music to be printed with a Hebrew type-face text (1623). It included a rabbinical curse on anyone who copied the contents.