Here are some things you should know about copyright:
- Copyright registration is not required. It's very useful if you ever expect to go to court, but as a friend pointed out, just e-mailing the source to yourself at some public e-mail service, such as Gmail, would probably establish that you did it earlier. And you can keep your work secret too.
- Copyright is assigned automatically to you. There is absolutely no need to even say "Copyright (c) Year, Author". At least after 198x, I think.
- Copyright is available for all works, regardless of quality. It protects both your kindergarten drawings and Escher's complicated and beautiful works equally.
- Copyright covers only distribution. That should be evident from the name, but a lot of people put restrictions on use and ascribe them to "copyright". If you intend to distribute the work, for profit or otherwise, you need permission from the author. Note that if your use of the material falls under "fair-use", permission might not be required. However, fair-use is never defined explicitly, it's upto the courts to decide what exactly is fair-use.
- Copyright is limited. It expires. However, current copyright time limits are so generous that you may have to wait for a very long time for any part of current culture to fall into the public domain.
- The public domain, as a legal expression, means that there is no copyright asserted. A public domain work belongs to all, and everybody is free to do whatsoever he/she desires with it. Copyright and public-domain are mutually exclusive. You can put your works in the public domain by stating so, without having to wait for the expiry of your copyright.
3 comments:
I knew about the GNU GPL but didn't know the term 'copyleft'. Thank you.
Since this is legal stuff, I'm going to get pedantic and go on a fault finding spree:
<pedantic>
"which eventually led me to stop considering licenses for my software" - not apt considering the next part of your sentence.
Google's e-mail service is either Gmail or GMail in most nations, not G-mail.
"Atleast" must be "At least".
"fair-use is never defined explicitly"
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use :
"The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976"
So, perhaps the courts may need to use a Balancing test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balancing_test) to determine whether or not the use was fair use, but it is defined explicitly in US law.
</pedantic>
@abhijit:
not apt ...: My software is only GPLed when I have no other choice --- I'm using GPLed components :) This is the reason many believe the GPL is not a "freedom" license. But they miss the point that GPL is about freedom for the users, not for the authors per se.
g-mail: corrected
atleast: it's wrong, but I write this way, anyways, corrected :)
fair-use is never defined explicitly: should be viewed in context of the entire sentence. I'm not talking of the notion of fair-use. I'm talking of whether a specific use is fair-use.
There is no list of "fair uses" in Copyright law. It's all based on Court's interpretation of the law. Some silly myths regarding fair use: everything for educational purposes is "fair-use" because no profit is being made. Yeah right. Just get a good lawyer who can prove that wrong. But the ultimate "fair use" was when a professor (not mine, at IIMB) advised his students that copying a book in its entirety, and distributing it was fine as long as you didn't bind the copies! :)
The balancing test for copyright is not an objective test. It's subjective. Which is why I make that point.
But regardless of anything, ask your lawyer before doing anything :)
- sree
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