Explaining Copyright- Ben

Copyright is a law that keeps work original and safe for the authors who create the work.
When someone makes a hard copy of anything, as soon as they publish it, it is automatically copyrighted. This means they own their work and if someone else wants to use their work they need to ask permission. If anybody uses their work without permission or tries to take credit for it, it can result in a lawsuit, or other legal actions. This means they pay a fine for illegally using your work or in some cases can be jailed.
Work is under copyright from moment of publication until 70 years after the authors death. Then it falls into public domain. Public domain means that anyone can use your work without permission, but they cannot take credit for it.
Also authors could put a copy write label on his work so everyone automatically has permission to use his work, so if his work is popular he doesn't have to reply to oodles of requests to use his work.
All this doesn't mean you can use other people's work. You can use other people's work if you cite the source. Some good citing websites are citationmachine.net and noodletools.com.