What is Copyright?

Copyright. What is it? Well, copyright gives you and only you the permission to do whatever you want with an original piece of your own work. And, unless you give someone else permission to use your work or alter it or publish it, it is only yours. You are in control. Although, the same goes for someone else's piece of work. You can't touch it unless you have full permission from the author. Some pieces of work, however, are not protected by copyright. For example; titles, names, ideas, discoveries, and works of the US government can not be copyrighted. And that's only naming a few. You also may be wondering, why do we need copyright? Isn't this a free country, shouldn't we be able to use what we want? Well, not exactly. Think about it like this; you had just taken a really good picture for your photography class but you forgot to copyright it (putting the c inside the circle and your name somewhere on the work) and someone else found it and started selling it for money. You took the picture so you have every right to collect the money for it. But, unless you copyright it, then you have no proof that its yours and the other person can keep profiting off your work. So, as you can see, it is a very good thing we have copyright. There is more to it though. You won't always have copyright to your work. 70 years after you die, someone else is free to copyright it as their own. It will most likely be a descendant of yours but it could really be anyone. Also, there is something called Creative Commons. Creative Commons (two c's inside the little circle) gives anyone permission to use the work as long as they credit the author. For example, if you wrote a book/short story and put the c's on the back which is for Creative Commons, then you are giving permission to your readers to quote your book. If its copyrighted, then they need permission from you first to do anything with it. The reason we have Creative Commons is so that your readers or audience can use your work more freely but you are still maintaining control over your work to a certain degree. Copyright and Creative Commons are both good and bad. They can be annoying if we just want a picture for a presentation and we have to cite it, but when it's our own work, they can be a huge help!