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1. Copyright

What Is Copyright? (from the US government copyright website)

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

  • reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords
  • prepare derivative works based upon the work
  • distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending
  • perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audio­ visual works
  • display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audio visual work
  • perform the work publicly (in the case of sound recordings*) by means of a digital audio transmission

So when a person makes something they have the right to control copies of their work and the right to control the public display or distribution of their work.

Digital media and the internet have made it so much easier to copy and distribute material (no need to obtain and actually publish a physical copy). In order to prevent copyright violations YouTube has implemented a Content ID system. They have a giant database of music and videos and who owns the copyright. When a video is uploaded it is scanned against that database and if it contains copyrighted material, the copyright holder is contacted. The video is then often taken down, a royalty payment is negotiated, or fair use is claimed.

Here is an example of a high school drama class that uploaded a video containing copyrighted music. They were obviously contacted and agreed to place a link selling the song.

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