A Background on Copyright Law

We've all been in this situation. You're put into a group project where you create this amazing piece of work-- whether it's a piece of art or a paper that you've put a lot of time and effort into. Then, suddenly, a classmate or someone you know tries to take credit for some or all of your hard work. In the student world, this isn't as big of a deal, it's more of an annoyance. However, when we all graduate and become professionals with big-shot jobs, this turns into an entirely new kind of annoyance. This turns into the lawsuit-bringing kind of annoyance.

Of course, when someone comes up with something extremely innovative and creative, it can be tempting to claim the work as your own. As the creator of a work, it's important to copyright it right away.

Everyone has a general idea of what a copyright is. We see its' messages at the beginnings of movies, the trademarks on the labels of our CDs (if anyone buys CDs anymore). A copyright makes something yours, it ensures that all of the credit belongs to you. It gives you the rights to every aspect of your work.

Because it can be tempting to copy someone's work, the Supreme Court has had to make legislation protecting copyrights. Two laws that have been put into place are the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The Copyright Act of 1976 outlined what works can and cannot be copyrighted. These works include the obvious to the not-so-obvious. Section 102 of the Copyright Act of 1976 states that copyright protection extends to "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." Literary works such as books and articles can be copyrighted. Musical works such as songs and recordings (including lyrics and accompaniment) can be copyrighted. Dramatic works such as movies and plays can be copyrighted. Choreographed works and dances can be copyrighted. Art work such as sculptures and paintings can be copyrighted.

The works that cannot be copyrighted are broader. Ideas, facts, and mathematical equations cannot be copyrighted because they are not a creative work.

The Copyright Act of 1976 was the first law to make a precedent on copyrights. The Copyright Act of 1976 protected the rights of the creator of the work. Under this act, the creator is given the exclusive right to reproduce or copy their work, to create derivative works, to sell their work, to perform the work publicly, and to display the work publicly. The creator can keep the rights to some or all of these rights or can sell the rights to another. For example, the creator of a widely-known film can sell the right to a publishing company to create books based on the film.

However, just because the author of the work has these rights, that doesn't mean that people are not allowed to use the works in any way. The Copyright Act of 1976 also discusses what is considered fair use of works without infringing on copyrights.

Fair use allows for people to use the work for educational purposes, for criticism, or for parody works. There are four factors to determine whether one has fair use of a work.
1) The purpose and character of the use (is this for educational purposes?)
2) The nature of the copyrighted work
3) The amount and substantiality of the portion of the work used (how much of the work was copied? Was the amount copied the most important part of the work?)
4) The effect of the new work on the market of the original work (does the new work take away profit from the original work?)

To submit a copyright, you can simply place the copyright symbol on your work. To be safe, you should submit your work to the Copyright Office, assuring that there will be a copy of your work on file in their official office in case someone does infringe on your work. This will provide you with the evidence you need to win your case.

Of course, with the invention of the Internet, some modifications had to happen for this Act to keep up with technology. Therefore, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act was created in 1998.

In short, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 prevents people from circulating copyrighted material online. Not only are people not allowed to post things online, but it is against the law to create a device that “snakes around” copyrights and copies works. One thing that the DMCA also does is protect Internet service providers (ISPs) from being blamed when someone does post a copyrighted material through their network. Theoretically, the ISP would not know about the copyright infringement taking place and should not be held liable for any claim made against them.

In this time period, it is easy to copyright a material and publish it online for the whole world to have access to. We see examples of this on www.youtube.com. A person will take a video camera into a movie theater and post the video on YouTube, allowing people to see the movie for free. This violates the Copyright Act of 1976 by taking away from the market value that the movie would originally have and also violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act by using the Internet to circumvent a work.

On YouTube and many other similar sites, there is such a thing as a “take down notice”. This is when a web site will issue a notice demanding that a video or post be taken down immediately. It is in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the notice serves as a warning to let the publisher know they must take it down. If they do not, legal action can be taken against them.

Now that a thorough background on Copyright Law has been given, a couple of the more famous and interesting cases can be explored.

Sources:

Borade, Gaynor. "Facts About the Copyright Act of 1976." Buzzle Web Portal: Intelligent Life on the Web. Web. 19 Apr. 2010. .

"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Overview." Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .