Guides: Westlake Academy : Copyright

Extended Essay Information
Evaluating Sources
Beginning the Research Process
Copyright

Notes from the video: Copyright Basics: Crash Course Intellectual Property 2

In 1710, Great Britain passed the Statute of Anne also known as the Copyright Act of 1709, the 1st copyright law protecting intellectual property for individual authors rather than publishers or printers.

Our US Constitution has the intellectual property clause: Article 1, Section 8, clause 8:

“The Congress shall have the 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.”

This clause promotes the progress of learning and knowledge through the grant of limited monopolies to authors and inventors in the form of copyrights and patents.

Examples of original works of authorship, these are independently creative and not copied from other works.

Literary works
Musical works
Sound recordings
Dramatic works
Pantomimes and choreographic works
Pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works
Motion pictures
Architectural works

Examples of copyright:

Copyright applies to any tangible medium of expression like a book, mp3, source code, choreography, and blue print.
Copyright protection also extends to intangible material like a literary work not the physical copy of the work.
Copyright extends to an expression, not ideas, it must be fixed to a tangible medium.
Facts cannot be copyrighted.
Works crated by the federal government cannot be copyrighted.
An Author must be a human being.
If you work for a company and created the work as part of your job then “work made by hire” is owned by the company.

Different types of rights for copyright owners.

Adaptation right means that copyright owners have the exclusive right to:

“Translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which the work may be recast, transformed or adapted.”

Under the distribution right copyright owners have the right to:

“To distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.”

Once the internet happened – in the digital world what counts as a distribution? Streaming video services, torrent sharing even the licensing media from the market place like iTunes.

We struggle to keep pace with emerging technologies. The public performance right allows copyright owners to:

“To recite, render, play, dance or act any copyright protected work, either directly or by means of any device or process…”

How long does copyright last?
- Under the most recent version of US Copyright Laws these exclusive rights last for the life time of the author plus 70 years.
- For works made for hire, terms last from 95 years from publication or 120 years from date of creation whichever is shorter.

References

CrashCourse. (2015, April 30). Copyright Basics: Crash Course Intellectual Property 2. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Tamoj84j64I