r/explainlikeimfive • u/I_Cast_Itchy_Eyeball • 1d ago
Other ELI5: Copyrights
My kid wanted to know about copyright for some reason. I am afraid I just do not get it. I came for help after looking into it.
Please explain copyright law. š«Ŗ
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u/02K30C1 1d ago
Copyright basically means that if you create something, you have the right to profit from it, and decide what to do with it. It applies to anything written or recorded, both audio and video.
So if you write a story, article, poem, anything, no one else can take that and use it without your permission. If you make a new song or video or movie, or painted art, or a sculpture, it applies to this too.
Thats why youāll see YouTube videos taken down if they use music without the song owners permission. The creator/owner of that music has the right to decide who can use it and what for.
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u/drumminherbie 1d ago
You draw a picture of a duck. You decide who gets to use it. No permission, no use allowed.
You do not have to apply for copyright, itās automatic. You can create a Creative Commons license to easily share your work for remixing in ways you define.
Hope that helps!
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u/Aluxanatomy 1d ago
In the US at least, copyright prevents someone from making money on an image, "likeness" (anything too similar to the original image), song, or body of text that someone else has stated they made and therefore own.
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u/Portarossa 1d ago
It's a big topic, but basically:
Hey, I have this thing that I've spent a lot of time and effort making. It's not really fair for just anyone to be able to copy this thing and sell it after I put all that work into it; it's my work, after all. So we're all going to get together and agree that this thing belongs to me, and if you want to watch it, or read it, or listen to it, you should pay me some money to reimburse me for that, and that anyone trying to let you watch it or read it or listen to it without paying me is really just making it impossible for me to keep making things that you want to keep enjoying. After all, I still need to eat and pay bills.
The problem is, that can kind of lock you into weird situations. Does this rule last forever, even after I'm dead? What happens if someone else claims they came up with something all on their own but it's really close to what I came up with? How close can it be before it's a problem? What happens if I want to let some people use what I made, but not others? What happens if two people both claim to own a thing, because one of them did the writing and one of them did the colouring in? How do we decide who gets the money? If I decide I'm done writing about my characters, does someone else get to step in and take over? Can I stop them? Do I get a cut? Doe the same rules apply in different countries? How can we come to an agreement about selling my stuff globally in countries that don't have those same legal protections?
And so on, and so on. That's some of the stuff that copyright law deals with: it's part of what's called 'intellectual property', and it deals with (among other things) how we set 'property' rights on creative works.
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u/atarivcs 1d ago
If you make an original story, picture, song, movie, etc, you own it. Nobody else can use it without your permission
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u/herejusttoannoyyou 1d ago
They can use just, they just canāt make money or other personal gain off of it.
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u/Redeem123 1d ago
Incorrect. Profit or gain is not necessary for copyright infringement. It can be part of a fair use defense (which is not a right as often claimed, but a defense), but it is not a simple yes or no.
Example:
I set up a projector in a public park and play a movie I do not own for anyone to watch. No tickets sold, no money, and therefore no personal gain.
However, that is still cut and dry copyright infringement.
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u/herejusttoannoyyou 1d ago
Ya ok, so they can use it, they just canāt make money or other personal gain or commit an act that could cause the original creator to miss out on profit, like copying and sharing it for free.
Probably still more complicated than that, but thatās plenty good for a 5 year old explanation.
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u/jrhooo 1d ago
Lets talk about three different but confuses categories, since weāre here.
Patent - I invented something. A device. A machine. A technology. I file for a patent that proves I made this. Its my work. You canāt copy what I did and profit off it without getting my approval and probably me making you pay me.
You CAN invent your own machine that does the same thing as mine, but you canāt copy the way I did it.
Trademark - I create a brand. I file trademarks so that you canāt copy my brand to try and confuse people and profit. If i own adidas, you canāt sell shoes with three stripes logos, because you are obviously using MY brand popularity to sell your shoe by getting it confused with mine.
Copyright - I make a creative work. I make a film. A make a song. I draw a picture. You canāt copy my stuff and use it for yourself without permission. You canāt sell photocopies of my painting. You canāt hold a concert singing my songs. (Unless I give you permission, OR enough years have passed that the copyright expires)
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u/brianogilvie 1d ago
You canāt hold a concert singing my songs. (Unless I give you permission, OR enough years have passed that the copyright expires)
That is not true in the USA. US copyright provides for compulsory mechanical licenses of musical compositions, as long as the person who wants to reproduce them pays the required licensing fee. The main exception is that the copyright holder has the exclusive right of first publishing, meaning that until you record your song, or publish it as sheet music, I can only sing it if you grant permission.
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u/kirklennon 1d ago
Itās worth noting that while laws are country-specific, there are multiple treaties (notably the Berne Convention) such that thereās not much variety in copyright law and the basics are largely global.Ā
Copyright concerns the right to make copies. Generally speaking only the owner can make copies, until the copyright eventually expires. This includes derivative copies where someone takes something someone else made and changes or adapts it, such as a translation or making turning a book into a movie.Ā
There are generally narrow exceptions (Fair Use in the US and Fair Dealing in some other jurisdictions) allowing certain unauthorized copies, though these are often a lot narrower than people tend to think and a lot of copying relies on non-enforcement.Ā
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u/zer0number 1d ago
ELI5 is hard for this one, but basically -
Your kid writes a story about a happy cat who does happy things. Your kid now has the exclusive right to profit from that story - no one else can unless your kid allows it (like making happy cat toys or a Saturday morning happy cat cartoon)*.
The copyright exists from the second your kid writes the story, but to make sure they can enforce that copyright against all manner of evildoers, they should probably register it with the government.
Eventually, the government and the gods decide that your kid has had plenty of time to make money, and maybe someone else can take their story and improve upon it somehow. So after a set amount of time, their copyright expires, and anyone can use your kid's work in any way they see fit.
*There is fair use where, say, your kid's rival down the street who happens to be a cat story critic can use some of your kid's work to point out all of its flaws and plot holes, while another who is a fan can use parts of it to praise it. Another kid who wants to genderbend the cat to make a funny fan fic parody can use the characters and part of the work to do that. Your kid's teacher wants to use your kid's work to show how writing about happy cats can result in a dopamine hit. He can do that since he's using it for education.
Fair use is the only way someone without permission may profit from using someone else's work.
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u/Stan__Wright 1d ago edited 1d ago
Copyright is a civil time-limited legal right to exclusive commercial use of a work of art. This can be a text, an image, a piece of music (words and melody but not chords/arrangements). The term of exclusivity was initially set at the author's lifetime plus 25 years, but over the past century, any time the Disney copyrights started to come close to running out, the Disney corp pulled strings in congress and bought an extension in the term. IIRC the Berne convention makes copyright reciprocal among signatory nations. Each country is obliged to treat foreign copyright holders identically to domestic copyrights. This right is owned by the author of the work, but may be sold or assigned to others. The designated author may also be a corporation.
There are exceptions to this right, known as 'fair use' exceptions. These include but are not limited to works of scholarship, satire, 'personal use' and commentary.
Importantly, this is a civil right, meaning that a copyright violation is a tort (grounds for a lawsuit) and not a crime, although the record industry has spent a lot of money trying to conflate the two.
Copyright is intrinsic. You can register a copyright, and that helps if you need to prove ownership later in court, but authors still (in theory) own their rights whether it is registered or not. Or indeed, whether someone else has registered it first.
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u/TheLostExplorer7 1d ago
Your kid writes an original fiction book. All the rights to the characters' and setting's images, names, etc are solely his to use. If somebody else uses it, they are in violation of his copyright. This includes fan works like fan art, fanfiction, etc.
The reason most authors don't go after fanfiction and fanart is mostly because it's expensive to chase down those people and they are largely harmless fans that are doing free promotion for the original product.
Copyright protection is automatically granted. You do not need to file anything to get copyright protection. Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years in the United States at present. For corporate entities like say Disney, it is currently 120 years from the publication of said work.
Once something moves out of copyright, it becomes public domain, meaning anyone can then use the characters in new and unique stories. See public domain characters like Robin Hood, King Arthur, or Sherlock Homes.
There are other types of Intellectual Property protections like Trademark and Patents, which a lot of the general public gets confused with copyright. But in general, copyright is for published work, trademarks are for useable products, and patents are for inventions. There are some potential crossover cases for all three. For instance, you could have a usable product that is both a book, product, and an invention where you could hold the copyright, trademark and patent for all three. Trademarks and patents need to be filed for though and approved of by the United States Patent and Trademark Office if you are in the US.
Also in general because of the Berne Convention of 1886, which is virtually signed by all nations in today's world, nations typically reciprocate copyright protections to works such as books, music and art.
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u/markmakesfun 1d ago
Copyright law protects the authors of creative works having their output taken and used without their permission. If something is not a creative work it canāt be copyrighted. Copyrights last the lifetime of the author/creator plus 75 years.
Things that are commercial properties (like logos) are not copyrighted but trademarked. The character of āHamburglerā is a creative work and could be copyrighted. The McDonalds logo would be trademarked. The logo for Stanley Steemer would be a āservice mark.ā Itās the same as a trademark but specifically applies to businesses that donāt sell products but instead sell services.
As someone mentioned, copyrights are automatic. You create a work on your own, it belongs to you, 100%. You can register a copyright to gain extra factors on a creative work that you own, but you donāt have to.
Trademarks and Servicemarks do not have an expiration date. Copyrights do, but the time is pretty generous.
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u/sighthoundman 1d ago
Copyright is the right to copy. (And sell.)
If you record yourself singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb", that performance is yours. You can give it to whoever you want to, you can sell it. And you can make copies.
But you didn't write "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Anyone else can also record it and sell that recording. But if you record "Stairway to Heaven", you can't sell that recording unless you have an agreement with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. They have a copyright on the song, you only have a copyright on your particular recording.
After some time (long after you're dead), your copyright will expire and your recording will enter the "public domain". Then anyone can make a copy and sell it or give it away.
If someone is copying your work, you can sue for copyright infringement.
Registering your copyright isn't required (US), but it makes enforcing it easier.
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u/jrhawk42 1d ago
Copyright in it's basic form is the right to distribute copies of a creative work.
What constitutes distributing copies, and creative work is a bit more complicated.
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u/jcastroarnaud 1d ago
Wikipedia to the rescue: copyright. Also, copyleft and Creative Commons licenses are alternatives to traditional copyright.
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u/FlickasMom 1d ago
The one that always trips people up is photography. The rights to your wedding pictures probably don't belong to you; they belong to the photographer.
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u/Trouble-Every-Day 1d ago
The government (of any country) wants there to be art. Art contributes to culture which makes people happy and other countries think youāre cool.
Art takes work, and it turns out artists donāt work for free (not good ones, anyway). But while it can take many years to create a piece of art, it takes a lot less effort for someone else to copy it and distribute it freely.
So for there to be more art, you have to make it a law that only the artist has the right to make copies of their art (or literature or music, etc.) That way, the artist has a chance to get paid for their art, and they will be able to make more of it.
BUT WAIT! Art (etc.) also relies on people reusing and reinterpreting other peopleās work. Itās very important to let people do so or you donāt get new art.
So, copyright is limited. In the U.S., a work is protected by copyright for the life of the creator plus 70 years or 95 years for works for hire*. By that time, the creator is plenty dead and doesnāt need the money, and neither do his kids. So at this point the work enters what is called public domain, and anyone can use it. There are also other exceptions under a doctrine of āfair useā and there are limits to what you can copyright (you canāt copyright just an idea, for example).
*for works created after 1978.
Copyright law (and other intellectual property law) is a balancing act between letting people profit from their work and letting people use otherās work to make even better work.
If you think that sounds tricky, youāre right. Copyright law is very complicated, way more so than I just laid out, and you should absolutely speak to a lawyer if you have any real questions.
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u/rsdancey 1d ago
Copyright( * ) gives you a time-limited monopoly on the right to distribute, modify and perform( ** ) expressions you have created and fixed in a tangible medium.
Copyright protects expressions, not ideas or brands. Ideas are protected by patents, brands are protected by trademarks.
A copyright is automatically created when you make your expression - i.e. when you print it, save it in a computer, paint it on canvas, etc. A copyright lasts for 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter if the work is made under contract; or the life of the creator plus 75 years if not. While these terms seemed to be continuously extended in the past that has ceased and barring some fairly major upheaval, copyright terms are likely fixed for the foreseeable future.
You can register a copyright. When you register you send the work to the Copyright Office and your claim for a copyright is examined by an expert. If the copyright is registered you receive certification, and if someone infringes your work and you successfully sue them they will likely be forced to pay a lot more in damages than they would have if the copyright were not registered. Registration has a fee.
Copyrights cannot be lost or revoked due to inaction or failure to defend them; unlike a trademark. Multiple people can share a copyright. A work can have different copyright owners for different parts of the work.
You cannot copyright an idea. If your copyright and and idea are so fused that they are inseparable, something called the "merger doctrine" applies and your copyright is lost.
You cannot convert something from the public domain into a copyright. If your work is derived from the public domain you will not hold a valid copyright.
It may be possible to transform a work so much that the link to whatever original copyright may have existed is severed. That is a lot harder to do than it used to be because of a decision by the US Supreme Court in a case known as Orange Prince. Today, the degree of transformation required to achieve this is so substantial that it is almost the same as creating a novel expression in the first place.
Copyright includes the right to control the creation of derivative works such as translations into other languages, adaptations into other forms of expression (for example, turning a novel into a movie by way of a screenplay).
Characters can become copyright but the distinction between a trademark and a copyright can be blurry for characters. Mickey Mouse's copyright has expired and the character has entered the public domain but Mickey Mouse the trademark remains in force for many kinds of goods and services. Character copyrights aren't as straightforward as copyrights on bodies of material like books or paintings; they "emerge" as the character becomes clearly described in copyrighted material. You don't get a character copyright just by naming a character; the character has to be distinctive enough to clearly be a unique expression in its own right.
Words cannot be copyright without expression. "Luke Skywalker" is not a copyright; but the character of Luke Skywalker is. And it might also be a trademark. If you make up a word, like "Sauron" that word in and of itself is not copyright. Again, it might be a trademark.
(*) I answer for US copyright law; non-US copyright laws are different but most countries have harmonized and the law is very similar in most countries; some countries (especially those in Europe) provide for moral rights which give creators rights beyond and on top of copyright law.
(**) the copyright law gives you a fairly lengthy list of monopoly rights but most of them in practice don't matter much for most copyrights.
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u/FollowTheFellow 1d ago
As an aside, thereās a comic book that explains copyright in a nicely accessible way:
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u/Peregrine79 1d ago
Copyright is the government deciding that the creators of a non-tangible thing, like a story, or an image, should have the exclusive right to make money from the thing for a period of time. So the government creates a law saying that no one else can use this without permission, and the author or artist can sell copies (or license the to others to sell). This, in theory, allows someone to make a living with that sort of art.
For comparison, copyright did not exist in Elizabethan England, and most of the first published versions of Shakespeareās plays were published by random printers who put someone in the audience to copy down the dialog.
In the US, currently, the time the government has set is the life of the creator plus 70 years, so their heirs can also benefit, and items are automatically copyrighted from creation.
Up until 1978, you had to apply for copyright, renew it, and it only lasted for a fixed term based on date of publication. Which is why some items leave copyright every year, and some newer items are not in copyright despite being within that original term.
Finally, (in the US) there are exceptions to copyright, but they are generally fairly narrow. You can use a work to make fun of the work, which is called parody. You can use small snippets of the work to criticize or comment on the work. And others, similarly narrow in scope.
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u/DecalageVersLeRouge 1d ago
Copyright was invented so that talented people could have some money when they created something cool. If people could just copy their cool thing for free they might stop doing it. But also it shouldn't be forever, because that's not fair either. After they die everyone should be able to copy it.
[I'll leave it for you to explain how it all went wrong.]
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u/TreviTyger 23h ago edited 23h ago
Copyright is an umbrella term for a bunch of "rights" that automatically arise to a "natural person" the moment they fix their personal expression into a tangible media.
So a child draws a picture and it is their "own personal expression fixed in a tangible media." That is called a "work" in copyright law.
That child then has "rights" related to how that "work" is displayed, produced, adapted, marketed and distributed as well as being attributed to the work. These are linked to fundamental human rights related to property.
"displayed, produced, adapted, marketed and distributed as well as being attributed to the work." are the "copyrights".
Those "rights" apart from attribution can be traded to allow other to have the same rights but there must not be any prejudice to the child in their right being transferred to others.
So even if a child gives the physical drawing to their parent the actual "rights" stay with the child.
It means a parent cannot just up-load their child's drawing to social media without the child's permission.
These are the basics. When it comes to the creative industry it get more complex and written contracts and payments are required for a third party employers or distributor to obtain such rights.
There are international treaties and national laws that govern authors protections initially. The main one being the Berne Convention.
It should aslo be noted there are essentially TWO types of copyright tradition. The European "droit d'auteur" tradition and he Anglo American "common law copyright". The main difference is that most of the world uses the "droit d'auteur" tradition (Including the Berne Convention) where corporate copyright ownership is restricted.
Some info here,
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u/Blenderhead36 17h ago
Copyright exists to make creating new things worthwhile. If copyright didn't exist, big corporations could copy any character/story/etcetera that was popular at the local level, put big corporate money behind it to eclipse the original, and reap the reward without compensating the creator.
Copyright law forces those companies to license the IP instead, negotiating a payoff called a royalty to the creator. This means that you get paid for making something popular, and it is thus desirable to make things.
After a copyright expires, the intellectual property enters the public domain, at which point it can be used without licensing.
In the US, copyright was originally for 14 years with the original creator (and only the original creator, not a corporation or an heir) able to renew it once. The intention was that someone ought to be able to live comfortably from creating something that endured, but that such enduring concepts should eventually become available to any creator who could use it. It has been repeatedly extended due to lobbying from Disney to prevent Steamboat Willy, the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, from lapsing into the public domain.
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u/no_sight 1d ago edited 1d ago
Copyright gives you incentive to create something and make money off of it.
JK Rowling created Harry Potter when she was pretty poor. She brought it to publishers, who sold the books, and everyone made money.
Without copyright, the publishers could have just taken her idea and written 20 other books about Harry Potter without her being involved or paying her. Essentially stealing her idea.
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u/LackingUtility 1d ago
Writing takes effort. Back in the olden days, copying a written work was expensive and time consuming - monks would spend years manually copying out the Bible, for example - so there didn't really need to be any additional protection.
But then around 1440, Gutenberg invented the printing press, and this made it possible to copy a book quickly and cheaply. Suddenly, there was an explosion of cheap books. Sounds great, right? Well, it is for the readers, but not so much for authors. You spend years writing your novel, and publish a copy, your competitor buys it, and then runs off a thousand copies for pennies. You can't make any money now, because if you want to sell your novel, you also have to charge pennies... but you had to put food on your table, pay rent all those years, etc., so now you're in debt. So being an author kind of sucks. Either you need a wealthy patron who doesn't care about income and is willing to pay you to write a book, or you have to be already independently wealthy. Or you can't write.
So, in 1710, Britain passes the Statute of Anne, which says that if you write a book, you are the only person with the right to make copies - copyright - for 14 years. Then it becomes public domain and anyone can make copies. This protects authors by giving them a limited time to make their money back.
This is eventually extended to other works, including art, maps, sculpture, architecture, music, etc. - any "creative work embodied in a tangible medium". And the exclusive rights grow too - the right to make and distribute copies, the right to make derivative works such as translations or screenplays, the right to publicly perform the work, the right to broadcast it, etc.
So, basically, copyright is a government-enforced, time-limited monopoly to allow authors and artists an exclusive period to make money off their creative efforts, because we understand that all of the effort is "up front" and once created, copying is very easy.
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u/brianogilvie 1d ago
Nice explanation. I'll just add, as an early modern historian, that already in the 16th century, "privileges" were issued by governments that gave authors or publishers the exclusive right to print and sell a work for a given number of years. But they had to be requested and negotiated; they were not a right (hence "privilege," in its original sense of "private law" granted by a sovereign). There are famous (among historians of printing!) cases of books that remained unpublished for a long time because their authors could not negotiate a privilege, so no publisher was willing to risk printing them.
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u/Metabolical 1d ago
To prevent the I Made This Meme typically on creative works like music or writing.
It amounts to a temporary monopoly on the creative work.
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u/eBalisani 1d ago
There are two answers here:
Tell your kid that when he buys a baguette from the baker, he can eat the baguette, but he doesn't own the right to make baguettes, nor can he prevent the baker from making and selling additional baguettes (daily, presumably). The baker owns the baguette, even if your kid bought it and ate it, period.
The other answer involves understanding what a patent is - not sure a 5 year old would be privy to the subtleties, but basically: that toilet paper holder was invented in 190-something, and patented shortly thereafter (I saw the patent with my own eyes - newsflash: in the patent drawing, the paper rolls from over, not under, so that settles the inevitable question). For 28 years, any factory in the world that wanted to produce and sell this toilet paper roll holder had to pay a fee called a license to the inventor.
After 28 years (might've been 14, don't sue me), the patent expired and became public domain: everyone from Brooklyn to Beijing could make and sell their own without paying the inventor for his design.
In music, a copyright is like a patent but that lasts a lot longer. I vaguely remember 50+25 years, plus another 25 maybe after the death of the original owner.
There's a website called the Library of Congress, which hosts all these documents, Title 17 of US Copyright if memory serves - it used to be a book that I bought and read front to back, but now it's a web page and PDF - if your five year old is interested. It's an easy read.
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u/GlobalWatts 4h ago
Society recognizes there is cultural and economic value in having people make art. The problem with art is it often requires a lot of effort to make, but minimal effort to reproduce. And people will be less willing to invest that effort if somebody else can come along and profit off it instead of you.
So to incentivize the creation of art, we empowered governments to write laws that give the artist exclusive rights to determine how the work is used and who can profit from it. Which includes the ability to punish people via the legal system for infringing upon those rights.
To ensure that society culturally benefits from the work, those rights have a limited duration, after which it become available to everyone.
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u/solidgoldrocketpants 1d ago
If you have an original idea for a song/movie/book and you go ahead and create that song/movie/book, the "right to copy" (ie make money off it) is yours for the rest of your life plus 95 years.