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Chapter 1: Copyright Basics
Our written, recorded, and broadcast world is surrounded by warnings about copyright. If you look in the opening pages of most books, you will find a warning like this:
“All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews”.
Even more familiar is the FBI warning at the start of most DVDs viewed by Americans today:
“All rights reserved. These DVDs are authorized for sale or rent only in the country where originally sold (i.e., only in the U.S. or only in Canada, respectively). Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or exhibition violates federal laws with severe penalties and violates ____ Pictures Home Entertainment’s standard terms of trade”.
These statements inform the viewer that they must respect “all rights,” may not use or reproduce the contents, or endure “severe penalties”.
Just what are the “All rights” that are “reserved”? Can you reserve just any rights? Do you have any rights?
By the end of this chapter you should be able to answer :
Copyright is a right given to authors and inventors in the Constitution. It is “the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” (Article 1, Section 8 Constitutional Convention, 1790). The “exclusive right” means that the author, and the author alone, has the right to publish and distribute his work. The same clause includes inventors and their inventions. Many authors will authorize a publisher to print and distribute their work. To do this they must transfer their rights to reproduce and to distribute to the publisher, normally for a limited period of time. Likewise, an inventor patents her work, then sells patent rights to industries ready to use it.
Since 1790, in different acts of Congress, music, photography, movies, computer software, graphic arts, and boat hull designs have all been granted copyright protection. (U.S. Government )Both legislation and court cases have led to the development of several “doctrines,” or common practices, about copyright. In this chapter we will cover the most basic ones needed to understand the broad field of copyright law.
Any creation in a fixed medium that expresses a “modicum of creativity” (Holmes 1903, 239) is considered copyrighted at the moment of its creation. (U.S. Copyright Office 1992) Only a small amount of originality is required. If a student takes notes in class and does not write the instructor’s lecture down word for word, then his or her notes have sufficient creativity to qualify for copyright. An
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