Copyright is a legal
concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work
exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the
right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be
credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who
may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related
rights. It is an intellectual property form (such as patent, the trademark,
and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or
information that is substantive and discrete.
Copyright
initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing; the
contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by
giving authors control of and profit from them. Copyrights are said to be
territorial, which means that they do not extend beyond the territory of a
specific state unless that state is a party to an international agreement.
Today, however, this is less relevant since most countries are parties to at
least one such agreement. While many aspects of national copyright laws have
been standardized through international copyright agreements, copyright laws of
most countries have some unique features.Typically, the duration of copyright
is the whole life of the creator plus fifty to a hundred years from the
creator's death, or a finite period for anonymous or corporate creations. Some
jurisdictions have required formalities to establishing copyright, but most
recognize copyright in any completed work, without formal registration.
Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though some jurisdictions
do apply criminal sanctions.
Most jurisdictions recognize copyright limitations,
allowing "fair" exceptions to the creator's exclusivity of copyright,
and giving users certain rights. The development of digital media and computer
network technologies have prompted reinterpretation of these exceptions,
introduced new difficulties in enforcing copyright, and inspired additional
challenges to copyright law's philosophic basis. Simultaneously, businesses
with great economic dependence upon copyright have advocated the extension and
expansion of their copy rights, and sought additional legal and technological
enforcement.
Some
take the approach of looking for coherent justifications of established
copyright systems, while others start with general ethical theories, such as
utilitarianism and try to analyse policy through that lens. Another approach
denies the meaningfulness of any ethical justification for existing copyright
law, viewing it simply as a result (and perhaps an undesirable result) of
political processes.Another widely debated issue is the relationship between
copyrights and other forms of "intellectual property", and material
property. Most scholars of copyright agree that it can be called a kind of
property, because it involves the exclusion of others from something. But there
is disagreement about the extent to which that fact should allow the
transportation of other beliefs and intuitions about material possessions.There
are many other philosophical questions which arise in the jurisprudence of
copyright. They include such problems as determining when one work is
"derived" from another, or deciding when information has been placed
in a "tangible" or "material" form.Some critics claim
copyright law protects corporate interests while criminalizing legitimate use,
while proponents argue the law is fair and just.
Copyright may apply to
a wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms, or
"works". Specifics vary by jurisdiction, but these can include poems,
theses, plays, other literary works, movies, dances, musical compositions,
audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, software, radio
and television broadcasts, and industrial designs. Graphic designs and
industrial designs may have separate or overlapping laws applied to them in
some jurisdictions.Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves,
only the form or manner in which they are expressed. For example, the copyright
to a Mickey Mouse cartoon restricts others from making copies of the cartoon or
creating derivative works based on Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse,
but does not prohibit the creation of other works about anthropomorphic mice in
general, so long as they are different enough to not be judged copies of
Disney's. In many jurisdictions, copyright law makes exceptions to these
restrictions when the work is copied for the purpose of commentary or other
related uses.
Copyright
laws are standardized somewhat through international conventions such as the
Berne Convention and Universal Copyright Convention. These multilateral
treaties have been ratified by nearly all countries, and international
organizations such as the European Union or World Trade Organization require
their member states to comply with them.
Typically,
a work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for
copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time (some
jurisdictions may allow this to be extended). Different countries impose
different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United
Kingdom there has to be some 'skill, labour and judgment' that has gone into
it. In Australia and the United Kingdom it has been held that a single word is
insufficient to comprise a copyright work. However, single words or a short string
of words can sometimes be registered as a trademark instead.
Copyright
law recognises the right of an author based on whether the work actually is an
original creation, rather than based on whether it is unique; two authors may
own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that
the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other.
In
all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is
automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any
government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example
by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a
videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his
or her exclusive rights.However, while registration isn't needed to exercise
copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves
as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder
to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees. (In the USA, registering after
an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits.)
The
original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the author rather than
the author himself, if the work is a "work for hire". For example in
English law, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that if a
copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the
copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a "Work
for Hire."Copyrights are generally enforced by the holder in a civil law
court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes in some jurisdictions.
While central registries are kept in some countries which aid in proving claims
of ownership, registering does not necessarily prove ownership, nor does the
fact of copying (even without permission) necessarily prove that copyright was
infringed. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting
activity, but are now becoming more commonplace as copyright collectives such
as the RIAA are increasingly targeting the file sharing home Internet user.
Thus far, however, most such cases against file sharers have been settled out
of court.
Meanwhile,
in copyleft, a copyright holder grants an irrevocable license to the recipient
of a copy, generally permitting the free unlimited use, modification and
redistribution of copies, often including sale of media or auxiliary materials
which may carry a different copyright license (e.g. documentation).The
distinctive condition to that license is that any modifications to the work, if
redistributed, must carry the same permissions (i.e. license terms) and be made
available in a form which facilitates modification.For software, this means in
source code.
Copyleft applies copyright law to force
derivative works to also be released with a copyleft license. So long as all of
those wanting to modify the work accept the terms, the net effect is to facilitate
successive improvement by a wide range of contributors. Those who are unwilling
or unable to accept the terms are prohibited from creating derivative works.No
restrictions apply to works in the public domain. They may be freely modified,
and the creator of the derivative work may license any new portions of the
derivative work, but not the public domain portion, under any terms, or none.
The resulting derivative work may not be available to the creators of the
original or may compete with them.
Copyleft is one of the key features in
free software/open source licences, and is the licenses' legal framework to
ensure that derivatives of the licensed work stay free/open. If the licensee
fails to distribute derivative works under the same license he will face legal
consequences - the license is terminated, leaving the licensee without
permission to copy, distribute, display publicly, or prepare derivative works
of the software.Other free software licenses, such as those used by the BSD
operating systems, the X Window System and the Apache web server, are not
copyleft licenses because they do not require the licensee to distribute
derivative works under the same license. There is an ongoing debate as to which
class of license provides a larger degree of freedom. This debate hinges on
complex issues such as the definition of freedom and whose freedoms are more
important. It is sometimes argued that the copyleft licenses attempt to
maximize the freedom of all potential recipients in the future (freedom from the
creation of proprietary software), while non-copyleft free software licenses
maximize the freedom of the initial recipient (freedom to create proprietary
software).An example of a free software license that uses strong copyleft is
the GNU General Public License. Free software licenses that use weak copyleft
include the GNU Lesser General Public License and the Mozilla Public License.
Examples of non-copyleft free software licenses include the Q Public License,
the X11 license, and the BSD licenses.Copyleft licenses for materials other
than software include the Creative Commons ShareAlike licenses and the GNU Free
Documentation License. The latter is being used for the content of Wikipedia.
The Free Art license is a license that can be applied to any work of art.
Copyleft licenses are sometimes referred to
as viral copyright licenses, often by those who feel that they may lose out as
a result, because any works derived from a copylefted work must themselves be
copylefted. The term "viral" implies propagation like that of a
biological virus through an entire organ of similar cells or species of similar
bodies. In context of legally binding contracts and licenses, "viral"
refers to anything, especially anything memetic, that propagates itself by
attaching itself to something else, regardless of whether the viral assertions
themselves add value to the individual work. The viral metaphor is over-used
but is reasonable to help distinguish between free software and open source in
software and documentation projects. Most advocates of copyleft argue that the
analogy between copyleft and computer viruses does not apply. As they point
out, computer viruses generally infect computers without the awareness of the
user, whereas the copyleft actually grants the user certain permissions to
distribute modified programs, which is not allowed under copyright law without
permission of the copyright holder. Most proprietary software licenses do not
allow such distribution. Furthermore, copyright itself is "viral" in
this sense, since any works derived from a copyrighted work must have
permission from and obey any conditions set by the original copyright holder.
The view that copyleft licenses are viral is
supported by Microsoft, who say that if a product uses GPLed code, that product
automatically escapes the creator's control and becomes GPLed, leaving the
creator no recourse. Obviously, working for a software company will have a like
effect. Advocates, including Eben Moglen, Professor of Law at Columbia
University and counsel for the Free Software Foundation, note that this is not
true since the GPL is a license, not a contract.Microsoft, and others, in
describing the GPL as a "viral license", may also be referring to the
idea that any release of something new under the GPL would seem to create a
positive feedback network effect, in which over time there will be an
ever-expanding amount of copylefted code. Code reuse is often useful in
software engineering, as a way to save effort and get on with a project,
especially when a perfectly sensible design and implementation has already been
done and is available. In contrast, those working on non-copylefted programs
will have to "reinvent the wheel" for parts of their programs.This is
often cited as a disadvantage of non-copylefted software development.
Many feel that copyleft licenses are
desirable and popular for shared works precisely because they are viral, and
apply to all derivative works, which are thus "infected" by the
requirement to re-integrate changes deemed desirable by any party down the
line. This requirement is seen as important because it ensures uniform license
terms and free access, and makes copyleft projects resistant to unnecessary
forking because all maintainers, of the original work or other versions, may
use any modifications released by anyone. Useful changes tend to be merged, and
different versions are maintained only to the extent that they are useful.
Without the "viral" license, variant terms can apply to the forks,
derivative works can be controlled commercially by the parties that extend or
translate them, and the project would degrade to an open source one. It is
thought that Linux has not suffered the same fragmentation as Unix because it
is copylefted.
Thus,
this is basically what when down between both of the topic discussed under this
interactive blog, which is on the matter of copyleft and copyright. There are
many pros and cons on these two concepts
as been laid out on the above explanation.
A 133517
such an informative reading...thank u..
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