Copyright

For copyright issues in relation to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:copyrights.

A copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by government for a limited time to protect the particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed. Copyright may subsist in a wide range of creative or artistics forms or "works", including literary works, movies, musical works, sound recordings, paintings, photographs, software, and industrial designs. Copyright is a type of intellectual property.

Copyright law only protects the particular form or manner in which ideas or information have been manifested, and is not designed or intended to protect the actual concepts, facts, styles or techniques which may be embodied in or represented by the ideas or information.

For example, the copyright which subsists in relation to the Mickey Mouse cartoon prohibits third parties from distributing the cartoon or creating derivative works which copy or mimic Disney’s particular talking mouse, but does not prohibit the creation of artistic works about talking mice in general. Other forms of intellectual property may provide legal protection where copyright does not.

The copyright symbol is used to give notice that a work is covered by copyright.

Obtaining and enforcing copyright

Typically, a work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for a copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time if not extended. Different countries impose different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some 'skill, originality and work' which has gone into it. However, even fairly trivial amounts of these qualities are sufficient for determining whether a particular act of copying constitutes an infringement of the author's original expression.

In the United States, copyright has relatively recently been made automatic, which has had the effect of making it more like a property right. Thus, as with property, a copyright need not be granted or obtained through official registration with the government. Once such an expression is secured in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, a videotape or a letter), the copyright holder is prepared to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while a copyright need not be officially registered for the author to begin excercising his exclusive rights, registration of works does have its benefits: serving as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enabling the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees (whereas registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and profits). The original owner of the copyright may be the employer of the actual author rather than the author himself if the work is a "work for hire". Again, this principle is widespread; in English law the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that where a work in which copyright subsists is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically assigned to the employer.

Copyrights are generally enforced by the owner in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but may now become more commonplace as the copyright collectives like the RIAA are more and more targeting the file sharing home Internet user. Thus far however, these cases have usually been settled outside of court, with demands of payment of several thousand dollars accompanied by nothing more than a threat to sue the file sharer, thus such cases do not even make it to civil law courts in reality.

The exclusive rights of the copyright holder

Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:

to produce copies of the work and to sell those copies (including, typically, electronic copies)
to import or export the work
to create derivative works
to perform or display the work publicly
to sell or assign these rights to others

The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise the attendant rights, and others are prohibited from doing them without the consent of the copyright holder. Copyright is often called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit people (eg. readers, viewers, or listeners) from doing something, rather than permit people (e.g. authors) to do something. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law.

There is however a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law as an entity, and is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right. Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that definining copyright purely as a negative right is contrary to the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain.

In the United States, the terms "copyright" and "patent" do not appear in the Constitution; they are merely the forms of exclusive rights that the American legislature is constitutionally empowered to secure to accomplish the stated purpose of promoting the progress of science and useful arts (eg. according to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: "Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.").

Limits and exceptions to copyright

Main article: Limitations and exceptions to copyright

Idea-expression dichotomy and the merger doctrine

Main article: Idea-expression divide

A copyright covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself — this is called the idea/expression or fact/expression dichotomy. For example, if a book is written describing a new way to organize books in a library, a copyright does not prohibit a reader from freely using and describing that concept to others; it is only the particular expression of that process as originally described that is protected by copyright. One might be able to obtain a patent for the method, but that is a different subject. Compilations of facts or data may also be copyrighted, but such a copyright is thin; it only applies to the particular selection and arrangement of the facts, not to the particular facts themselves.

In some cases, ideas may be capable of intelligible expression in only one or a limited number of ways. Therefore even the expression in these circumstances is not covered. In the United States this is known as the merger doctrine, because the expression is considered to be inextricably merged with the idea. Merger is often pleaded as an affirmative defense to charges of infringement.

The first-sale doctrine (exhaustion of rights)

Main article: first-sale doctrine

Copyright law does not restrict anyone from reselling legitimately obtained copies of copyrighted works, provided that those copies were originally produced by or with the permission of the copyright holder. It is therefore legal, for example, to resell a copyrighted book or CD. In the United States this is known as the first-sale doctrine, and was established by the courts to clarify the legality of reselling books in second-hand bookstores.

The first-sale doctrine is known as exhaustion of rights in other countries and is a principle which applies to other intellectual property rights.

Of course, it may be wondered why the exclusive right to sell copies of one's work needs to be specifically provided for by law, as the sale of unauthorized copies necessarily means the copyright holder's exclusive right to produce such copies has been breached.

In addition, copyright, in most cases, does not prohibit one from acts such as modifying, defacing, or destroying his or her own legitimately obtained copies of copyrighted works, so long as duplication is not involved. However, in countries that implement moral rights, a copyright owner can in some cases successfully prevent the mutilation or destruction of a work that is publicly visible.

Fair use and fair dealing

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Copyright does not prohibit all copying or replication. In the United States, the fair use doctrine, codified by the Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. Section 107, permits some copying and distribution. The statute does not clearly define fair use, but instead gives four non-exclusive factors to consider in a fair use analysis. In the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth countries, a similar notion of fair dealing was established by the courts or through legislation. The concept is sometimes not well defined, however in Canada, private copying for personal use has been expressly permitted by statute since 1999.

In the United States the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act Codified in Section 10, 1992) prohibits action against consumers making noncommercial recordings of music, in return for royalties on both media and devices plus mandatory copy-control mechanisms on recorders.

Section 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Later acts amended US Copyright law so that making as few as 10 copies are considered commercial, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act effectively permits DRM (Digital Rights/Restrictions Management) to prevent manufacture, importation, or distribution of recording devices if the device bypasses an access or copy control.

History of copyright

Main article: History of copyright

Authors, patrons, and owners of works throughout the ages have tried to direct and control how copies of such works could be used once disseminated to others. Mozart's patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, allowed his compositions to be freely performed, while Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "Water Music."

Access control was always used as a measure to disallow works from being copied without the consent of the author/owner. The Library of Alexandria (aka “The Kings Library”) wasn’t a place that an average person could walk into and borrow a book from. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

While monopolies in general were certainly conceived of well before the invention of the printing press, copyright in particular does not appear to have been developed as a concept until then. Prior to Gutenberg's development of movable type, which made mass reproduction of printed works quick and cheap, the process of copying a work was as labor intensive and expensive as creating the original. It appears publishers, rather than authors, were the first to seek restrictions on copying printed works. Given that publishers now obtain the copyright from the authors as a condition of mass reproduction of a work, one of the criticisms of the current system is that it benefits publishers more than it does authors. This is a chief argument of the proponents of peer-to-peer file sharing systems.

While governments had previously granted monopoly rights to publishers to sell printed works, the modern concept of copyright originated in 1710 with the British Statute of Anne. This statute first accorded exclusive rights to authors rather than publishers, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886 first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations (copyrights were also provided by the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, but that today this agreement is largely only of historical interest). Under the Berne convention, copyrights for creative works generally are not granted, but rather automatically assumed; an author does not have to "register" or "apply for" a copyright. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all exclusive rights to the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.

Critique

Main article: Philosophy of copyright

Critiques of copyright as a whole fall broadly into two camps: Those who assert that the very concept of copyright has never been of net benefit to society, and has always served simply to enrich a few at the expense of creativity; and those who assert that the existing copyright regime must be reformed to maintain its relevance in the new Information society.

Among the latter group, there are also some who continue to agree with copyright as a concept to protect authors' rights, but feel that it "outlives its welcome" by granting protection for too long, often far beyond the lifetime of its owner, and is therefore of little direct benefit to him or her. This is typically attributed to corporate lobbying.

To most critics, the general problem is that the current (international) copyright system undermines its own goal (Boyle 1996, 142). The concepts of the public domain and the intrinsic freedom of information are necessary precepts for creators to be able to build on published expression. But these are gradually being eroded, as copyright terms are repeatedly extended to last beyond the lifetime of the audience which experienced and knows of the original work.

Other copyright scholars believe that irrespective of contemporary advances in technology, copyright remains the fundamental way by which authors, sculptors, artists, musicians and others can fund the creation of new works, and that absent legal protection, many valuable books and pieces of art would not be created. This interest is arguably served even by repeated extension of copyright terms to encompass multiple generations beyond the copyright holder's life, not only because many "authors" and copyright holders are corporations, but also because the right of an author's heirs to continue to profit from a protected work may provide a substantial part of the incentive to create.

One counter-argument to this is the recent success of free software projects such as Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and the Apache web server. These popular products have demonstrated that quality works can be created, even in the absence of copyright-enforced monopoly rents[1] (http://www2.cio.com/consultant/report2214.html). Instead, these products use copyright to enforce their license terms, which are designed to ensure the free nature of the work, rather than securing exclusive rights for the owner for monetary gain; such a license is called a copyleft or free software license. Whether quality work can be created in the absence of any copyright law is currently largely untested.

Copyrighted works replicated onto digital media are easily and trivially copied via file sharing, and those who do this routinely break copyright laws hundreds or thousands of times, typically with minimal thought or concern. Attempts to prevent this have been largely unsuccessful, and file sharing almost never results in severe consequences for the violators. Producers of copyrighted material often attribute losses in their sales to online copying, yet they generally continue to produce material and make profits. This lack of apparent effect has been gradually eroding the belief that copyright as presently constructed is indispensable. A few artists actually support the file sharing of their own works, arguing that it expands their audience to include people who would not otherwise be able or willing to legally purchase their material.

It can be argued that, rather than criminalise the many millions of file sharers around the world who now routinely use the internet to commit acts that breach copyright (given that copyright laws have proven unenforceable), copyright holders use the legal system to apply extortion by charging for products that are readily available for free. Bill Gates is on record as saying that there is no way technically of preventing copyrighted digital material being replicated, so it is likely that future attempts to enforce copyrights will become uneconomic, as well as unpopular politically.

Copyright can also be used to stifle political criticism. For example, in the US the contents of talk shows and similar programs are covered by copyright. Robert Greenwald, a director of Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War documentary was refused the right to use a clip of a George W. Bush interview from NBC's Meet the Press. Although the fair use provisions may apply in such cases, the risks and the pressure from insurance companies usually prevents the use of materials without permission.

In the US in 2003, controversial changes implemented by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extending the length of copyright under U.S. copyright law by 20 years were constitutionally challenged unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court. The Court, in the case called Eldred v. Ashcroft, held inter alia that in placing existing and future copyrights in parity in the CTEA, Congress acted within its authority and did not transgress constitutional limitations.

Some online authors, such as Cory Doctorow, retain the copyright to their work but license it for free distribution (for example under a Creative Commons License). This has the benefit of letting authors loosen some of the barriers that copyright imposes, allowing them to partially contribute the work to the community while retaining other exclusive rights they hold in it.

Main article: Copyright social conflict

Copyright is also conceived by some as an "artifical barrier" in that "expressions" could be freely exchanged between individuals and groups if there were no copyright or other legal restrictions preventing. Such people believe that as the state does not necessarily possess the moral authority to enact copyright laws, individuals may vary in their observation of such laws.

Copyright concepts are perceived to be under challenge in the modern technological era, from the increasing use of peer to peer filesharing, to the downward trend in profits for major record labels and the movie industry. Public interest groups and industry and alike are entering the public education system to teach about curriculum from their perspectives. The lobbying group for the MPAA have a curriculum entitledWhat's the Diff? (http://www.mediainfocenter.org/story.asp?story_id=61684893) taught by a group of volunteers called Junior Achievement. The Business Software Alliance also has their own curriculum program called Play it Cybersafe (http://www.playitcybersafe.com), which is distributed to school children through a teacher's magazine called the Weekly Reader. There seems to be a general consensus that there needs to be some curriculum materials for school-aged children on copyright. A public-wiki has been installed by Downhill Battle to build a copyright curriculum called Copyright Curriculum (http://www.copyrightcurriculum.com) for teachers to download and use in their classrooms. The American Librarian Association (http://www.ala.org) will also be releasing their own curriculum for librarians to distribute in winter 2004.

Other aspects

Transfer and licensing

Copyright may be assigned or transferred from one party to another. For example, a musician who records an album will sign an agreement with a record company in which the musician agrees to transfer all copyrights in the recordings to the company in exchange for royalties and other terms. One might ask why a copyright holder would ever give up his rights. The answer is that large companies generally have production and marketing capabilities far beyond that of the author. In the digital age of music, music may be copied and distributed for a minimal cost through the Internet, however the record industry attempts to provide the service of promoting and marketing the artist so that the work can reach a much larger audience. A copyright holder does not have to transfer all rights completely. Some of the rights may be transferred, or else the copyright holder may grant another party a non-exclusive license to copy and/or distribute the work in a particular region.

Copyright may also be licensed. Some jurisdictions may provide that certain classes of copyrighted works be made available under a statutory license (eg. musical works in the United States). This is also called a compulsory license, because under this scheme, anyone who wishes to copy a covered work does not need the permission of the copyright owner, but instead merely files the proper notice and pays a set fee established by statute (or by agency decision under statutory guidance) for every copy made. Failure to follow the proper procedures would then result in the copyist being vulnerable to an infringement suit. Because of the difficulty of following this process for every individual work, copyright collectives and performing rights organisations (such as ASCAP, BMI, RIAA and MPAA) have been formed to sell the rights to hundreds of works at once. Though this market solution bypasses the statutory license, the availability of the statutory fee still helps dictate the price per work that collective rights organizations charge, driving it down to what the avoidance of procedural hassle would justify.

Brief comparison with other forms of intellectual property

In general, copyright law provides legal protection in relation to the creative or artistic expression of an idea, patent law protects an idea which comprises an invention, trademark law protects an idea represented by a sign which is used in relation to products or services, and registered designs law protects the look or appearance of a manufactured or functional article.

Alhough intellectual property laws are theoretically distinct, more than one type of IP may provide protection in relation to the same item or subject matter. For example, in the case of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, the image and name of Mickey Mouse would be the subject of trademark protection, while the cartoon itself would be subject to copyright. Titles and character names from books or movies may also be protectable as trademarks while the works from which they are drawn may qualify for copyright protection.

Another point of distinction is that a copyright (and a patent) is generally subject to a statutorily-defined fixed term, whereas a trademark registration may remain in force indefinitely if the trademark is periodically used and renewal fees continue to be duly paid to the relevant jurisdiction's trade marks office or registry. Once the term of a copyright has expired, the formerly copyrighted work enters the public domain and may be freely used or exploited by anyone, as courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright.

Copyright notices

Due to previously mandatory requirements, when a work such as a book or movie was created the work generally contained a copyright notice. This notice comprised a letter c inside a circle (ie. ©), or the word "copyright", followed by the year(s) of the copyright and the name of the copyright owner. Certain alternative formats were permitted for certain types of works. A copyright notice serves to inform any potential users that the work is protected by copyright.

This requirement was generally the result of United States legal requirements, but since 1989 in the US, the use of copyright notices has become optional. With the exception of a small number of countries which still require notices to be on works, this requirement is generally optional except for works which were originally created before the particular country became a member of the Berne Convention (the members of which are collectively known as the Berne Union).

A copyright notice is no longer required for a work to be legally protected in jurisdictions which have acceded to the Berne Convention. In most jurisdictions a work may be protected by copyright from the moment of its creation regardless of whether or not it bears a copyright notice. However, the existence of a copyright notice may make it easier to claim certain damages for infringement in legal proceedings, as a defendant may be presumed to have ignored the notice and intentionally infringed copyright.

Year of copyright

The year(s) of copyright are listed after the © symbol. If the work has been modified (i.e., a new edition) and recopyrighted, there will be more than one year listed.

The phrase, All rights reserved, was a formal notice that all rights granted under existing copyright law are retained by the copyright holder and that legal action may be taken against copyright infringement. It was provided as a result of the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, which required some statement of reservation of rights to grant international coverage in all the countries that were signatory to that convention. While it is commonplace to see it, this notice is now superfluous, as every country that is a member of the Buenos Aires Convention is also a member of the Berne Convention, which requires copyright to be valid without any formality of notice.

Moral rights

Main article: Moral rights

Many countries recognise certain moral rights of the author of a copyrighted work, following adoption of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (which in turn requires, inter alia, the implementation of the relevant provisions in the Berne Convention.

The Monty Python comedy troupe famously manages to rely on moral rights in 1975 in legal proceedings against American TV network ABC for airing re-edited versions of Monty Python's Flying Circus.)

The American exclusive rights tradition is inconsistent with the notion of moral rights as it was constituted in the Civil Code tradition stemming from France's revolution. In the United States, exclusive rights are statutory and granted by Congress. The first major copyright case in the United States, Wheaton v. Peters, established that copyright was not a natural right or a common law right. Although the case was later nullified when the Supreme Court declared it null and void, it soon became a symbol for the morality of copyright. When the United States signed the Berne Convention, they stipulated that the Convention's "moral rights" provisions were addressed sufficiently by other statutes, such as laws covering libel and slander.

In most of Europe it is not possible for authors to assign their moral rights (unlike the copyright itself, which is regarded as an item of property which can be sold, licensed, lent, mortgaged or given like any other property). They can agree not to enforce them (and such terms are very common in contracts in Europe). There may also be a requirement for the author to 'assert' these moral rights before they can be enforced. In many books, for example, this is done on a page near the beginning, in amongst the British Library/Library of Congress data.

Some European countries also provide for artist resale rights, which mean that artists are entitled to a portion of the appreciation of the value of their work each time it is sold. These rights are granted on the background of a different tradition, which granted droits d'auteur rather than copyright, also granting all creators various moral rights beyond the economic rights recognized in most copyright jurisdictions (see also parallel import).

Typefaces

In the United States, typeface designs cannot be protected by copyright, but may be protected as patents if sufficiently novel.

In Europe, Germany (in 1981) and the UK (in 1989) have passed laws making typeface designs copyrightable. The UK law, unlike the German, is retroactive, so designs produced before 1989 are also copyrighted, if the copyrights wouldn't have already expired.

Unusual copyright grants

On rare occasions, rights can be granted outside of usual legislation. When the current UK copyright legislation was debated in parliament, former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan successfully proposed an amendment entitling the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children to indefinitely retain the rights to payments of royalties for performances of Peter Pan. This privilege can be seen explicitly written into Schedule 6 (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_28.htm#sdiv6) of the Act.

The King James Version of the Bible also has an unusual status: While it is in the public domain throughout most of the world, production in the UK must be authorized by the Crown. Lillys Latin Grammar was also under perpetual crown copyright as of 1911.

Miscellaneous further reading

Bruce Lehman: Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, 1995)
John Gantz & Jack B. Rochester: Pirates of the Digital Millennium, Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2005, ISBNO-13-146315-2
Dr. Simon Moores - "March of the Spiders:" Policy Challenges for Copyright in the Digital Publishing Environment (2005)

External links

Copyright Curriculum (http://www.copyrightcurriculum.com) (public wiki of a comprehensive view on copyright for students)
A brief intro to copyright (http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html) (by Brad Templeton, with more in-depth links)
10 Big Myths about copyright explained (http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html)
Responses to the Copyright Crisis (http://www.templetons.com/brad/copysolve.html) - what can be done?
Thomas Babbington Macaulay on copyright (1841) (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/1345/03329)
The Free Expression Policy Project report on copyright (http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/copyright.html)
The differences between the length of copyright provided by different countries creates situations where it is legal to publish a work on the Web in one country (e.g., Bulgaria), but illegal to view that Web page in another country (e.g., the United States): http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/nonus.html
The Origin of Two American Copyright Theories --A Case of the Reception of English Law -- (http://orion.mt.tama.hosei.ac.jp/hideaki/twocopy.htm), The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Fall 2000, [Heldref Publications (http://www.heldref.org/)]) by Hideaki Shirata
Libraries in Today's Digital Age: The Copyright Controversy (http://www.michaellorenzen.com/eric/copyright.html)
Copyright Background (http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Copyright_Background) on infoanarchy.org including links to many countries laws, and economics of copyright
MP3Board.com (http://www.mp3board.com/) - News site which aggregates copyright news (and other IP news).
B. Gates Rants About Software Copyrights - in 1980 (http://slashdot.org/features/00/01/20/1316236.shtml)
COPYLEFT Software (http://www.copyleft.no)
FreeCulture.org (http://www.freeculture.org)
DownHill Battle (http://www.downhillbattle.org)
The Design & Artists Copyright Society (http://www.dacs.org.uk) - A not-for-profit organisation founded by artists to protect and promote their copyright.
Article "The Evolving Common Law Doctrine of Copyright Misuse: A Unified Theory and Its Application to Software (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol15/frischmann/frischmann.html)" by Brett Frischmann and Dan Moylan
United States Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/)
The Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) - A not-for-profit organization that offers a free and less restrictive alternative to the Copyright.
(2002 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 0023) (http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2002dltr0023.html) MUSIC PIRACY AND THE AUDIO HOME RECORDING ACT
March of the Spiders (http://zentelligence.blogspot.com/March%20of%20the%20Spiders.pdf) (by Simon Moores, for the UK Aediles Policy Unit)af:Kopiereg

cs:Autorské právo da:Ophavsret de:Urheberrecht es:Derechos de autor eo:Kopirajto fr:Copyright he:זכויות יוצרים ia:Copyright id:Hak Cipta it:Copyright nl:Auteursrecht ja:著作権 ko:저작권 pl:Prawo autorskie pt:Direitos autorais ro:Drepturi de autor ru:Авторское право simple:Copyright fi:Tekijänoikeus sv:Upphovsrätt zh:版权

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Copyright

Obtaining and enforcing copyright

The exclusive rights of the copyright holder

Limits and exceptions to copyright

Idea-expression dichotomy and the merger doctrine

The first-sale doctrine (exhaustion of rights)

Fair use and fair dealing

History of copyright

Critique

Other aspects

Transfer and licensing

Brief comparison with other forms of intellectual property

Copyright notices

Year of copyright

"All rights reserved"

Moral rights

Typefaces

Unusual copyright grants

See also

Related concepts

Critique

Other

Some legislation

National copyright laws

International treaties

Notable advocates of copyright law reform

Miscellaneous further reading

External links

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