What is copyright law?

What is copyright? A law that protects a creator’s ownership of and control over the work he or she creates, requiring other people to get the creator’s permission before they copy, share, or perform that work

Legal use of others work: Teaching, research, news reporting Factual, important to education Small quantity, portion is not crucial to entire work No major effect on the market, user legally owns a copy of original work

Illegal use of others work: Making money from sale of work don’t give credit to author of original work Very creative work (art, music, literary, films, plays), fiction Large or entire work used, the part of the original used is crucial to new work’s success Could replace selling of original, many copies made, used for a long time, made it available on the Web

What is fair use? The ability to use a small amount of someone’s creative work without permission, but only in certain ways Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship.

What is public domain? Creative work that’s not protected by copyright and is therefore free for one to use however one wants. Some public domain and open access websites contain resources such as images and clip art that are royalty free, or have a creative commons license. This means you do not need the permission of the copyright owner to use the material contained in these sites.