copyright and you







John Fink
Digital Scholarship Librarian
@adr
github.com/jbfink

WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?


  • It's a legal framework designed to protect both users and creators of intellectual work.
  • It grants for a limited time the ability for a content creator to profit from their creation.
  • It's intended to both ensure that a content creator gets paid for their work and that their work can be used by the public.

COPYRIGHT IS NOT ABSOLUTE





There are several exceptions to copyright.

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN





The public domain refers to works that have no copyright protection whatsoever, for (usually) two reasons:

THEY'rE TOO OLD


Copyright in Canada lasts for life of the author plus fifty years, so people like

  • William Shakespeare
  • George Orwell
  • Oscar Wilde
  • William Faulkner
  • e.e. cummings


are all copyright free.