Artists, writers, innovators, and entrepreneurs…in fact creative and business people from all backgrounds mostly those starting out, but even some with a level of experience in their field behind them, have at some point or yet another realised they’ve had misconceptions about what copyright is, how it works, for what types of creative work, and what it can do for them.

So, let’s get began, and possibly with the most obvious questions everyone may possibly have about copyright what is it, and why does it exist in the very first location?

Let’s begin with the latter question very first.

Why copyright exists

Imagine this scenario you create a cottage, say, to your own style. It’s a stunning, Tudor-style, thatched roof affair, with a tiny, properly-kept garden, and a breath-taking view of rolling, verdant green hills offering spectacular sunsets in the evening. Now picture someone finds out about your unique, very attractive cottage 1 day, and moves in although you’re out. You come residence to suddenly discover you cannot 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 constructing duplicate cottages matching your style down the road to sell and earn even a lot more cash. Now picture there was no law in existence to give you the chance to re-claim ownership of your property and no means to quit the usurper or win restitution from them for their actions.

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

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

“1st, persons who generate 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 entire would be impoverished by the fact that, in several circumstances, these works would not be created or developed.”(2)

Our civilization progresses through creativity and innovation. But for creators to create, they require to eat, they need to live, earn income, obtain recognition for their function and the stimulus to keep striving when the going gets tough. Copyright exists consequently to make this occur and help the innovators earn revenue from their creations. Copyright exists to promote creativity and support creative individuals live from their creativity. Copyright exists because it makes creative and business sense for copyright to exist. If a writer earns money from their work, they can earn the funds to maintain writing. If an artist earns money 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 properly as for the individual doing the innovating.

Take copyright away and you successfully tie the hands behind creatives’ backs. Picture a world culturally, creatively, industrially and economically deprived 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 correct context now you’re a creative person, aren’t you? Envision each time you produced something, a person could come along and copy it, claim it as their own and very likely make money from it, and without having fear of consequences because there was no law creating their actions punishable. You’d quite soon give up developing wouldn’t you? What’d be the point of all that difficult work when other people could reap the credit and the reward?

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

So that’s why copyright exists.

But just what is copyright?

Copyright is…

If you consider my crude cottage analogy once again it basically establishes what copyright is… a property appropriate. But a property correct that applies, not to land or buildings or vehicles, but to merchandise of the human mind… of our intellect. Creative goods, such as literary, dramatic, musical or artistic or filmic function.

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

Nicely, copyright has some similar but also different entitlements to other forms of property proper, specifically permitting the copyright owner (or owners) to:

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

This applies to a copyright owners work, no matter 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 function. Referred to as “Moral Rights”, these are:

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

Here’s some examples of these above 3 points:

I’ve asserted my moral right to be identified as the author of this post a right I have under law to do so(three). Had been this a fictional book, and it was adapted into a movie, I’d also have the correct to be identified in the movie as the author of the source novel – unless you set aside the correct. 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 a person else, both she and I could stop it, due to false attribution.(4)

If throughout the editing of this book, I’d felt a third party (an editor, a publisher or printer) had performed a hatchet job on all my tough function, I could not only let it be identified how unhappy I was with this mistreatment, but I’d have the proper to stop it too.(five)

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

See how Moral Rights function?

Now I will need to mention there are nonetheless exceptions to Moral Rights they cannot be asserted when copyrighted works are pc programs or computer-generated function (produced without 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 correct applies, the Moral Appropriate hasn’t been violated. In addition, if the creator/author works for an employer who does/will own the copyright of the work you produce, you will not have this correct either (far more on this “Work 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 created the work that is copyrighted.

You may well properly have guessed that already.

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

Lets be clear about this no-one else but you, the creator of the copyrighted function, has these rights not your mum, your partner, not good Mrs Miggins down the road. (Yes, not even her either.) They’re yours and yours alone (unless the produced function has been a collaborative effort).(8) Exclusively. Nor will those rights be anybody else’s unless and until you as the rights owner (often referred to 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 though…

There’s ownership and then there is Ownership

Men and women 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, appropriate? I mean you paid very good cash for them, appropriate? Certain you did. So you’re their owner.

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

No, of course you don’t.

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

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

Then there’s being hired to produce some function.

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 some thing 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 ready this function as component of the duties of our employment, or if it was commissioned from us, if we’re part of team employed on a project, or if in reality, 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 proper now and producing works the rights to which you assumed were yours? Then take a look at the employment contract you signed with your employer. There are likely to be provisions in there which cover this question of ownership. Or are you your self commissioning work from other people? Then look at the purchase 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 understand much more about copyright, please read the Free copyright companion by clicking here.

References:

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

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

(3) 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 far more than one author or creator has been involved in producing the function, then joint copyright ownership applies. Song writing partnerships are a classic example, wherein by virtue of having co-written a song, they every become the joint copyright owners.

Copyright Assignment