Copyright Vocabulary

Copyright

is a form of protection given to the author or creators of "original works or authorship"

Copyright Owner

is a person or a company who owns any one of the Exclusive Rights of copyright in a work.

Creative Commons

licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.

Fair Use

is the right of public to make reasonable use of copyright materials in special circumstances without the copyright owner

Public Domain

Works that are in the public domain belong to everyone and can be freely used without compensating the authors.

Derivative Work

is a work that is "based upon one or more preexisting works

Copyright Infringement

is the unauthorized use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's "exclusive rights", such as the right to reproduce

Plagiarism

is taking someone's work and calling it yours

Paraphrasing

is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words.

Work for hire

is either (1) a work prepared by an employee as part of her work, in which case the employer owns the copyright in the work, or (2) a work specially commissioned or ordered as a contribution to a Collective Work or Compilation

Expression

the words you use to tell a story, the picture that you paint, and the lyrics to a song you wrote are all types of "expression

License

is the permission granted by a copyright owner (also known as the "licensor") to the person requesting the right to exercise one or more of these exclusive rights

Royalty—private sector taxes) are usage-based payments made by one party (the "licensee") to another

Publish

a work means to distribute copies of that work to the public.

Performing Rights

The right to perform a composition in public; this is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder.

Media

term applied to agencies of mass communication, such as newspapers, magazines, and telecommunications

Patent

is a type of Intellectual Property that relates to inventions.

Citation

A written reference to a specific work (book, article, dissertation, report, musical composition, etc.) by a particular author or creator which identifies the document in which the work may be found.

Creative Works

..., poems, dances, paintings, writings, and other aesthetic creations

Piracy

the stealing of software by copying it and giving or selling it to another person.

Original Intent of Copyright Law

Promote the progress of the arts, science, and literature.

Copyright protection for an individual lasts:

70 years after the death of the author