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Authorship, Intellectual Property and Copyright Much time and effort is expended in the production of works of literature and research. Many authors derive much of their income from the publication and sale of their work. They are naturally sensitive to how other people use their work. Intellectual property laws help to protect the rights of authors and publishers in the marketplace. Intellectual property laws grant an author a limited monopoly over the use of her work under certain conditions. Persons who wish to make use of an author's work must follow the guidelines set up in law. Copyright law is a key component of U.S. law relating to intellectual property. The U.S. Copyright Act grants certain exclusive rights to the owner of a copyright in a work. These exclusive rights are different from the rights given to a person who merely owns a copy of the work. For example, when a person purchases a book at a bookstore, they have received a property right in a copy of a copyrighted work (namely, the book). The book owner may then resell the book, or even destroy it, since they own the book. However, the book's owner did not receive any copyright rights when they purchased the book. All copyright rights are held by the book's author until the author specifically transfers them. Consequently, the book owner may not make any copies of the book, since the right to copy a work is one of the exclusive rights granted under the Copyright Act. This distinction allows a copyright owner to sell copies of a work, or even the original work itself (such as a sculpture), without forfeiting her rights under the Copyright Act. (Tsyver, Daniel A., http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/scope.html) Copyright law is a federal law. The first copyright act was established in 1790. The law has been updated five times since its inception--in 1831, 1870, 1909, 1976 and 1998. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 is the most recent revision of copyright law. This amendment to copyright law attempts to apply copyright to online and electronic mediums. The duration of copyright varies depending on the date when the work was created.
Because the law is intended to protect the rights of authors and publishers it is illegal for your instructor to hand out copies of all the articles required for you to read in class. Your instructor is limited under copyright law to make one copy for his personal use and to place one copy on library reserve. If your instructor wanted to give each of you a copy of every magazine article required for class, he would have to get copyright permission from each copyright owner. The copyright owner would probably charge your instructor a fee for each copy of every article he made. And your instructor would have to pass this fee on to you. Because the process of getting copyright permission is so time-consuming, and possibly expensive, most instructors place required class readings on library reserve. Every student is allowed under copyright law to make one copy of a magazine article for personal use. However, a student is not allowed to copy an entire book. Protecting an author's intellectual property rights worked relatively well prior to the invention of the photocopier because most people were not willing to copy an entire work by hand and distribute it to others. With the invention of the photocopier, enforcement of copyright law became more difficult. Photo duplication of copyrighted material is relatively inexpensive and easy to do; as a result many people are tempted to circumvent copyright law in order to distribute information freely. Libraries and colleges have had to become much more careful in their oversight of copyright enforcement. Libraries and colleges have adapted relatively well to the demands of enforcing copyright law in the age of photocopiers. However, with the advent of the Internet and electronic forms of information, copyright enforcement has become virtually impossible. Unlike print information, electronic forms of information can be easily copied and transferred from one place to another. It is very easy to plagiarize another person's work and pass it off as one's own. Such a practice is both intellectually dishonest and illegal. Most colleges will give a student an F, or suspend or expel them if they are caught plagiarizing another person's work. For more information about copyright consult the following resources:
Now that we have a better understanding of what copyright is and why it exists, we will examine the limits of copyright law under the fair use exemption. Click on "Continue" or on the "Fair Use" link in the Navigation Menu.
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Authorship & Copyright
