Artists, writers, innovators, and entrepreneurs…in truth creative and business individuals from all backgrounds mostly those beginning out, but even some with a level of encounter in their field behind them, have at some point or one more realised they’ve had misconceptions about what copyright is, how it works, for what kinds of creative function, and what it can do for them.

So, let’s get started, and maybe with the most obvious questions any person may have about copyright what is it, and why does it exist in the first location?

Let’s start off with the latter question 1st.

Why copyright exists

Picture this scenario you create a cottage, say, to your own style. It is a beautiful, Tudor-style, thatched roof affair, with a little, properly-kept garden, and a breath-taking view of rolling, verdant green hills providing spectacular sunsets in the evening. Now picture somebody finds out about your unique, extremely appealing cottage one day, and moves in although you’re out. You come home to suddenly discover you can’t get back in, and this squatter inside is claiming they own your house, that they built it even, and worse, they’ve started renting out the back bedroom for a pretty penny. To cap it all, they’re now creating duplicate cottages matching your style down the road to sell and earn even far more money. Now imagine there was no law in existence to give you the opportunity to re-claim ownership of your property and no means to stop the usurper or win restitution from them for their actions.

Transfer this – admittedly crude – analogy to creativity, and that’s why copyright exists.

I like how the Irish Patents Office(1) puts it on their website with regards the Nature of Copyright:

“First, persons who develop works of the intellect or who invest in their creation and dissemination are entitled as a matter of human correct to secure a fair return for their creativity and investment.

Secondly, unless the rights of creators and investors to a fair return are supported, the community as a whole would be impoverished by the fact that, in several cases, these works would not be developed or developed.”(2)

Our civilization progresses through creativity and innovation. But for creators to develop, they require to eat, they want to live, earn funds, receive recognition for their work and the stimulus to maintain striving when the going gets tough. Copyright exists consequently to make this take place and help the innovators earn revenue from their creations. Copyright exists to promote creativity and assist creative people live from their creativity. Copyright exists simply because it makes creative and organization sense for copyright to exist. If a writer earns income from their function, they can earn the funds to keep writing. If an artist earns funds from the licensing and manufacturing of images of artwork, they have income so they can invest their time productively in a lot more projects. Furthermore, copyright exists to encourage innovation and prosperity, for society as a whole as well as for the individual performing the innovating.

Take copyright away and you effectively tie the hands behind creatives’ backs. Imagine a world culturally, creatively, industrially and economically deprived simply because its innovators weren’t given the reward for – and the power to safeguard the use of – their endeavours.

With that in mind, lets put my cottage analogy into appropriate context now you’re a creative individual, aren’t you? Picture each and every time you created something, a person could come along and copy it, claim it as their own and quite likely make income from it, and without having fear of consequences because there was no law generating their actions punishable. You’d extremely soon give up producing wouldn’t you? What’d be the point of all that hard work when other people could reap the credit and the reward?

Thankfully for us, that’s not how it is in the real world. Lets read again what the Irish Patents Office says that it’s a “…human appropriate to secure a fair return for their creativity and investment.” I say again, nicely put.

So that’s why copyright exists.

But just what is copyright?

Copyright is…

If you consider my crude cottage analogy once more it essentially establishes what copyright is… a property right. But a property right that applies, not to land or buildings or vehicles, but to items of the human mind… of our intellect. Creative products, such as literary, dramatic, musical or artistic or filmic work.

And what can 1 do with this “intellectual property” correct?

Well, copyright has some similar but also various entitlements to other forms of property correct, specifically allowing the copyright owner (or owners) to:

copy, lend and distribute their work license others (i.e. grant written permission) to use the copyright owner’s function adapt their function or licence others to do so (e.g. adapt a book into a movie) sell their developed function – their intellectual property – to others, and, importantly… have powers to quit wrongful infringement of those rights by third parties, i.e. the copying and exploitation of the copyright owner’s work without their permission, as properly as… acquire recompense in the form of compensation or damages for infringement where loss of revenue has been discovered.

This applies to a copyright owners work, regardless of whether or not it is been published, exhibited or otherwise released to the public for their consumption.

Not only this although…

Moral Rights in copyright

A creator and commissioner of a copyrighted function is also entitled under copyright to other rights relating to their work. Called “Moral Rights”, these are:

the appropriate to be identified as the author (or artist, or photographer, or composer, or director etc.), and to stop a function being falsely attributed to them the right not to have their work subjected to derogatory treatment (alteration, re-arrangement or deletion) by other people “derogatory treatment” becoming where the resulting work is mutilated, distorted, and can harm the creator/authors reputation the appropriate to privacy when it comes to specific photographs and films (e.g. a commissioner of private photos has the proper not to have them published or exhibited to the public where the photos turn into copyright works)

Here’s some examples of these above three points:

I’ve asserted my moral appropriate to be identified as the author of this article a correct I have under law to do so(3). Had been this a fictional book, and it was adapted into a movie, I’d also have the appropriate to be identified in the movie as the author of the source novel – unless you set aside the proper. Conversely, Alan Moore, whose now legendary unhappiness at the treatment of adaptations of his graphic novels and how he feels they’ve reflected badly on his original function, has prompted him to demand his name be removed from the movies credits, such as Watchmen.

If for some reason, J K Rowlings Harry Potter series of books had been knowingly and deliberately credited as my work and not hers by someone else, both she and I could stop it, due to false attribution.(four)

If in the course of the editing of this book, I’d felt a third party (an editor, a publisher or printer) had accomplished a hatchet job on all my difficult work, I could not only let it be identified how unhappy I was with this mistreatment, but I’d have the correct to quit it too.(five)

Finally, the photo-portraits of my substantial other and I which we paid a expert photographer for, hang on the walls where we live… and nowhere else without having our say-so.(6)

See how Moral Rights work?

Now I require to mention there are nonetheless exceptions to Moral Rights they can’t be asserted when copyrighted works are pc programs or pc-generated function (produced without having human intervention), or for a typeface style. Also, if the creator/author hasn’t asserted their correct to be identified as the creator/author if that proper applies, the Moral Proper hasn’t been violated. In addition, if the creator/author works for an employer who does/will own the copyright of the work you create, you will not have this right either (far more on this “Function Produced For Hire” later).

Who owns copyright

Now that we know the “what” and “why” of copyright, lets locate out the “who” just who this “copyright owner” I’ve mentioned is:

The copyright owner is the individual or persons who produced the work that is copyrighted.

You may well properly have guessed that already.

Under copyright law then, creatives are usually the very first individual(s) granted ownership of copyright over the function they’ve produced, as outlined above.(7) So if you’re an individual who’s developed a copyrighted function, the rights of ownership to that copyrighted function belong to none other… than you.

Lets be clear about this no-1 else but you, the creator of the copyrighted work, has these rights not your mum, your partner, not nice Mrs Miggins down the road. (Yes, not even her either.) They’re yours and yours alone (unless the produced work has been a collaborative effort).(8) Exclusively. Nor will those rights be anybody else’s unless and until you as the rights owner (occasionally known as “rights holder” too) grants permission of usage – licenses – or gives away/sells – assigns – those rights.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Works for me.

Having said that although…

There’s ownership and then there’s Ownership

Individuals can get the wrong end of the stick when they hear about copyright ownership, so I thought – now that’d I’ve identified what copyright ownership is – it’d be worth clarifying what it isn’t.

Now where you live you have items like DVDs, books and CDs all over, and you own them, proper? I mean you paid very good cash for them, proper? Certain you did. So you’re their owner.

But does that mean you own the copyright subsisting in those items?

No, of course you do not.

Its the author and/or the publisher/distributor who retains the copyright. There’s a difference then to owning a copy of a copyrightable work, and owning the copyright of that work itself. If you’re forking out money for, say a CD, you’re acquiring ownership of that CD copy of that recording artists album, not ownership of the master recordings themselves, nor the appropriate to generate copies of the CD you purchased either.

If a lot more than one author or creator has been involved in producing the work, then joint copyright ownership applies. Song writing partnerships are a classic example, wherein by virtue of having co-written a song, they every single grow to be the joint copyright owners.

Then there’s being hired to generate some work.

Were you hired? Check your copyright

We have all been employees, and many of us have been hired as freelancers. And in that time I guarantee you, we put something together, wrote or drew some thing for our employer. Does this mean according to what I’ve outlined above that copyright became ours?

Not necessarily.

You see, if we prepared this function as component of the duties of our employment, or if it was commissioned from us, if we’re component of team employed on a project, or if in fact, we’re creating some thing under a “work created for hire” agreement, then in all likelihood the copyright will be our employers, not ours.

So are you in employment appropriate now and developing works the rights to which you assumed were yours? Then take a look at the employment contract you signed with your employer. There are most likely to be provisions in there which cover this question of ownership. Or are you your self commissioning function from others? Then look at the buy orders you send out or agreements you sign. Are there clauses in the terms and conditions which cover intellectual property rights for individuals you hire, so that those rights are yours upon payment?

So there we are that’s what copyright is, its purpose, and who gets to use it.

To find out much more about copyright, please read the Totally free copyright companion by clicking here.

References:

(1) Irish Patents Office – “Copyright – A brief history”

(2) Irish Patents Office – “Copyright – A brief history”

(three) The Copyright, Designs &amp Patents Act 1988, Chapter IV Moral Rights, sections 77-79.

(four) The Copyright, Designs &amp Patents Act 1988, Chapter IV Moral Rights, section 84

(5) The Copyright, Designs &amp Patents Act 1988, Chapter IV Moral Rights, sections 80-81

(6) The Copyright, Designs &amp Patents Act 1988, Chapter IV Moral Rights, section 85

(7) The Copyright, Designs &amp Patents Act 1988, Chapter I, Subsistence, Ownership and Duration of Copyright, section 11

(8) If a lot more than 1 author or creator has been involved in producing the work, then joint copyright ownership applies. Song writing partnerships are a classic example, wherein by virtue of having co-written a song, they every grow to be the joint copyright owners.