Copyright is a system of legal rules designed to promote learning and culture by giving authors limited rights to control certain uses of their works, including copying, distribution, and public performance. By granting this control, the law hopes to create opportunities for authors to exploit their works commercially (traditionally through large intermediaries like publishers, movie studios, and record labels), and thereby to give an incentive for creation and publication of new creative works. Copyright applies to all kinds of creative works, from books to paintings to feature films and even software.
While authors (and the companies who buy and exploit their rights) are the initial beneficiaries of copyright, the ultimate purpose of copyright is to promote creation and distribution of creative work to benefit the public. That’s why, while copyright provides robust protection for copyright holders, it also provides balancing rights to users of copyrighted works, who also play an important role in serving the ultimate goal of public access to a rich variety of expressive works. Libraries, schools, and other institutions with a clear public service mission have specific exceptions for their benefit, and everyone has the right to make fair use of copyrighted works without payment or permission.
Understanding this balance of rights is important for authors and users alike. Authors who know their rights can make more informed decisions about how they license others to use their works. Authors who want primarily to be read, or to permit others freely to re-use their works to make new works, can use tools like Creative Commons licenses, and avoid signing exclusive agreements with publishers who will lock their works behind paywalls. And users who understand copyright will know when their activities are privileged by fair use and other copyright limitations and exceptions, and when to seek permission to share or re-use protected works.
Finally, it is worth noting that the boundary between "authors" and "users" is actually quite porous. All authors are users of existing works, whether in their research or incorporated directly into their creations, so authors rely on users' rights as part of their own creative process. And users are also often authors of their own works, and expect some measure of legal protection for those works. The dichotomy between authors who want maximum protection and users who want maximum access is false; the law protects an ecosystem of people who inhabit multiple roles, and is (mostly) designed to distribute rights and responsibilities to everyone in a balanced way.
Contributions from Brandon Butler
Copyright is a limited monopoly: the law gives copyright holders the exclusive right to do or to authorize a handful of specific things. The public is allowed to do anything it wants with a work outside of those specific rights. For example, while copyright grants an exclusive right to perform works publicly, private performances are completely outside of the law. You can sing in the shower all you like, and it’s nobody’s business but yours.
The copyright holder’s rights are:
Reproduction: the right to make new copies of the work. Although this right is not limited to commercial or large scale uses, every day private copying like forwarding an email or scanning a page from a book for research is often protected by fair use.
Distribution: the right to transfer a copy of the work to the public by sale, rental, lease, or lending. This right is balanced by the “first sale doctrine,” which allows the owner of any lawfully-made copy to dispose of that copy however she wishes. So, the distribution right is primarily a right to distribute a particular copy for the first time; after it is sold for the first time, the copy can circulate freely, just like any ordinary object. The first sale doctrine is what allows you to buy or sell used books and records, and libraries to lend them. (There are a couple of exceptions - software and music, for example, have special rules that block rental businesses.)
Public performance: This right applies when a copyrighted work is performed for a group of more people than a typical circle of family and friends. Examples of works that can be “performed” include plays, movies, or songs, but public recitation of a textual work (such as a poem or story) or performance of a dance also requires permission, unless they are covered by an exception (or fair use). Many performances that take place on a university campus are technically “public,” but the law permits a core use—performances for classroom teaching—without permission. (The idea that libraries and universities always need to buy public performance rights with their videos is a common misperception of copyright.) Notably, posting a streaming video online also constitutes a public performance, since the video is transmitted to members of the public. That means distance education and other online teaching and learning activities implicate this right. Section 110 of the Copyright Act carves out a series of exceptions to the public performance right for churches, playing broadcast TV or radio in bars and restaurants, and several other common performance scenarios.
Public display: This is the equivalent of performance, but covers making the work visible to the public.
Adaptation: This is the right to make what are called “derivative works” - works that take an existing work and recast it into a new form, such as translations, film adaptations, and sequels.
In addition to these rights, there are very limited moral rights available to the authors of certain works of fine art (works made in very limited quantities, signed and numbered by the artist) - primarily the right of attribution and to prevent being associated with a version of the work that has been modified without the author’s permission. When such works have achieved “recognized stature,” the author can also prevent their destruction.
- Written by Brandon Butler
The Constitution empowers Congress to secure copyrights “for limited times,” a vision of copyright that assumes protection for any given work will one day expire. As noted elsewhere in this guide, that day has been pushed farther and farther into the future over the last several decades, to the point that nothing has entered the public domain for many years. That is set to change soon, however, as works published in 1923 will finally rise into the public domain in 2018, and from then on works from successive years will begin entering the public domain as their 95-year terms expire.
The duration of copyright is a complex subject. The chart linked to below, developed and maintained by Peter Hirtle and Cornell University, is the best handy reference for questions about specific works. Generally the most important things to know about copyright duration are:
Contribution by Brandon Butler
To balance the rights granted to authors, the copyright law includes a series of limitations and exceptions that allow use of copyrighted works without permission in contexts where allowing rightsholder control would frustrate other important interests. Copyright protection is also limited in time and scope, so that some kinds of works, or aspects of works, are not protected at all. These provisions are explored in more detail in the section of the LibGuide on “Using Copyrighted Works,” but this overview will describe some of the aspects of the law that favor users.
Contributions from Brandon Butler
