Copyright protects an individual's rights as it relates to their work/creation, whether the work is published or non-published (beginning at the moment of creation). Although this law protects the artist's work, it does not protect intangible items such as systematic procedures, ideas and facts. Therefore, in order to be protected under the copyright law, a piece of work must be considered fixed/established, original and can not contain a substantial amount of material from another person's work.
Once a work is completed and copyright is established, the author or creator of the work has the right to transfer their rights to another individual or entity, this is called an assignment. Once transferred, the original author will no longer be the copyright owner. The author also has the option to grant someone else permission to use their work. This permission is called a license. Unless transferred, copyright extends 70 years pass an author/creator's life.
In order to avoid copyright infringement, individuals normally seek work that falls under the Creative Commons license. A Creative Common license allows users to more freely use work without having to pay or negotiate terms of usage. Furthermore, fair use promotes the unlicensed usage of copyrighted work as long as it falls within certain guidelines. These guidelines are as follow: 1) non-commercial, educational, and transformative, 2) Elements of Creativity, 3) Level of Originality (less than 10% of original work), and 4) Minimum to no market impact on the original work. These are the factors that a court takes into consideration when judging whether or not a work was fairly used according to the license. Therefore, these are definitely key points in which we should keep in mind and monitor as we contribute to the flow of information.
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