Q. What is copyright?
What we call
"copyright" is really a collection of rights that belong to
the creator of an original work -- for example, a book, an article, a
painting, or a recording. U.S. copyright law recognizes seven of these
rights, among them
The purpose of copyright law is to promote the "useful arts" by ensuring that the person who creates an "original work" can benefit from it.
The law requires a copyrighted work to be expressed in a "fixed and
tangible" form -- in other words, you can't copyright a song you've
sung or a story you've told but never written down. Material that you've
saved to a disk or posted to a discussion group would probably be considered "fixed and tangible," although, to be on the safe side, it couldn't
hurt to print a copy to paper.
Copyright is only available for "original works" -- that is, things you've
created yourself. You can't reprint a Shakespeare sonnet, which is in
the public domain (see
page 136), and copyright it in your own name.
You're likely to care about copyright in two situations:
Congratulations! You probably already have it. Thanks to the
Berne
Convention of 1988, writers and artists in the United States automatically own the copyright to any work they create the moment it is created (with certain exceptions, of course -- you didn't expect this to be
Q. Why should I care about copyright?
Q. How do I get a copyright on something I've written?
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