The purpose of this page is to give people a rudimentary understanding of copyright law so that when they bitch at each other, they can do so knowlegeably.

Copyright is the right that the producer of a creative work has to copy it, and to prevent others from doing so; by law, no one else may copy the work without permission.

Licenses may be granted to others, giving them the right to copy it subject to certain conditions. This is similar to a contract - it may only be copied under the conditions given by the copyright holder.

A creative work can be almost anything - a book, a song, a picture, a photograph, a poem, a phrase, a fictional character. Facts, however, cannot be copyrighted, nor (as the US Surpreme Court ruled in Feist v Rural) can a list of facts.

Copyright laws vary between countries; the relevant US law is Title 17.

A work which is not copyrighted is in the public domain, and may be freely copied by anyone. It may have been placed in the public domain by its creator, or the copyright may have expired: in the United States for example, all works produced prior to 1923 are considered public domain.

All work produced by the US federal government is public domain—thus, almost all content found on US government websites (.gov and .mil) is public domain. Note, however, that this applies only to the US Federal government. State governments retain the copyright on their work.

Example - Anything written by William Shakespare is so old, it is no longer protected by copyright. It may be copied without restriction.

Works produced by the UK government are not public domain; they are protected by Crown copyright.

A derivative work is something that is "based on and a close copy of" another copyrighted work.

Example: the Harry Potter movies are derivative works of the Harry Potter books. The makers of the Harry Potter movies required JK Rowling's permission to distribute them

You may not distribute a derivative work without the original author's permission.

Example: John writes a book, and then Mike write book that is "based on and a close copy of" John's book. Mike's book is a derivative work of John's book. Mike may not distribute his book without John's permission (For a real life example, see The Wind Done Gone)

Notice the word "distributing". If you write your own Harry Potter novel and some of your friends read it, you're fine. You haven't distributed it. If you post it on your website, that's different - that is distributing it and that is a violation of copyright law.

Generally, a summary (or analysis) of something is not a derivative work, unless it reproduces the original in great detail, at which point it becomes an abridgement and not a summary.

Taking a work in the public domain and modifying it creates a new copyright on the work. For instance, Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series is a re-telling of the book of Mormon. The books in that series are copyrighted.

However, the new work must be different from the original in order for a new copyright to apply, as the court ruled in [http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm

Bridgeman Art Library v Corel Corporation]. 

The Bridgeman Art Library had made photographic reproductions of famous works of art from museums around the world (works already in the public domain.) The Corel Corporation used those reproductions for an educational CD-ROM without paying Bridgeman. Bridgeman claimed copyright infringement. The Court ruled that reproductions of images in the public domain are not protected by copyright if the reproductions are slavish or lacking in originality. In their opinion, the Court noted: "There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection.... But 'slavish copying', although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify." [1]

Some licenses are called "share and share alike" licenses. Essentially, they have two requirements:

• A work protected by a share-and-share-alike license can be copied at will (Share)
• All derivative works must also use the same license (Share-alike)

Example: Alice writes a thesis on St. Peter and releases it under a share-and-share-alike license. Bob wants to use her thesis in his book about the Bible, but if he does, he would have to release his book under the same license. This would let others copy Bob's book whenever they want without paying him for it.

Some people have complained that such licenses are "viral" - they "infect" whatever they touch, such as Bob's book in the example above. However, using such a license is a choice. Bob does not have to use Alice's thesis if he doesn't want to.

All original Wikipedia text is distributed under the GFDL (see below), a share-and-share-alike license.

Our media files (pictures and sounds) can come under a variety of licenses. We prefer that our media be licensed such that we can redistribute as widely as possible. Hence, we prefer media licensed either as public domain or share-and-share-alike.

The author of a work may use whatever license he wants when licensing his/her copyrighted work. There are some well-known, commonly used licenses (but because copyright law varies from country to country, some of these may be void in some countries where copyright law does not support them):

There are many different kinds of non-commerical licenses, but generally they say something like You may use, copy, or distribute this work for non-commerical purposes.

Example: "Images contributed to this database by the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes without asking permission from the COC or paying copyright royalty"

Wikipedia is not a commerical enterprise; however, we dislike non-commerical licenses because they inhibit our ability to distribute our database.

A BSD-style license is one that says (essentally): "You may use, copy, or distribute this work, as long as you give credit to the original author" or something along those lines.

Example: "Photo by John Smith. Copyright 1999. Permission granted for free use and distribution, conditioned upon inclusion of the above attribution and copyright notice."

The original BSD license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution operating system, from which it gets its name.

The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is a license produced by the Free Software Foundation. It is a share-and-share-alike license.

Example: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later

Some people have complained that the GFDL is too hard to interpret. These complaints do have some merit, and will hopefully be solved by future versions of the GFDL.

All of Wikipedia's original text is distributed under the GFDL.

"Creative Commons License" (CCL) can actually refer to one of several licences written by Creative Commons (founded by Lawrence Lessig).

They differ on 4 key points:

• Requiring attribution (ala BSD licenses)
• Noncommercial (disallowing commerican reuse, ala noncommerical licenses)
• No Derivative Works (prohibiting someone from distributing a deriative work)
• Share Alike (permitting someone to distribute a derivative work).

All CCL licenses allow free distribution of the work, but different CCL licenses mix and match the above rules.

Under certain conditions, you may copy something without a license from the