Acquiring Essential Knowledge
You might not realize it, but copyright law is as integral to your daily life as local traffic laws. Copyright law is the area of law that limits how others may use the original works of authors (or creators, as we often call them)—works spanning the spectrum from novels and operas, to cat videos, to scribbles on a napkin.
Although copyright laws vary from country to country, there are certain commonalities among these laws globally. This is largely due to international treaties. These treaties are explained in detail in section 2.2 “Global Aspects of Copyright.”
There are some important fundamentals you need to be aware of regarding what is copyrightable, as well as who controls the rights and can grant permission to reuse a copyrighted work.
- Copyright grants a set of exclusive rights to creators, which means that no one else can copy, distribute, perform, adapt, or otherwise use their work in violation of those exclusive rights. This gives creators the means to control the use of their works by others, thereby incentivizing them to create new works in the first place. The person who controls the rights, however, may not always be the author. It is important to understand who controls the exclusive rights granted by copyright in order to understand who has authority to grant permissions to others to reuse the work (e. g., by adding a CC license to the work). For example:
- Work created in the course of your employment may be subject to differing degrees of employer ownership based on your jurisdiction. Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States adhere to some form of a doctrine commonly known as “work for hire.” This doctrine generally provides that if you have created a copyrightable work within the scope of your employment, the employer is the owner of, and controls the economic rights in the copyrighted work, even though you are the author and may retain your moral rights.
- Independent contractors may or may not own and control copyright in the works they create in that capacity—this determination almost always depends on the terms of the contract between you and the organization that engaged you to perform the work, even though you are the author and may have moral rights.
- Teachers, university faculty, and learners may or may not own and control copyright in the works they create in those capacities—that
