Copyright gives protection to the owner of the rights to an original work. The owner will often be the creator, although this is not always the case.
This means that individuals who want to reproduce the original work of others may need to seek permission to do so.
The following categories of material (amongst others) are protected by copyright:
The owner of copyright is usually the person who created the material, but it is important to remember that:
The following acts or activities are examples of what is restricted under copyright (though you may still be able to carry them out, under specfic circumstances).
Copyright applies to different types of work for varying periods of time as indicated below:
Type of work | Copyright expires after... |
---|---|
Literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work |
|
Typographical arrangement of a published edition |
25 years from the end of the calendar year in which the edition was first published |
Films |
70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the longest surviving of the following participants dies:
|
Sound recordings |
70 years from the end of the calendar year in which it was:
whichever of these three acts is the most recent. |
'Ulysses Sepia' by 96dpi (CC BY-NC 2.0) Accessed from Flickr 09/07/2015
'Home_cinema_01' by (CC BY-SA 2.0) Accessed from Flickr 25/07/2017
'Mis DVDs version 2006' by Esparta (CC BY-NC 2.0) Accessed from Flickr 09/07/2015