Defining Copyright

You may have seen the phrase “All Rights Reserved” on different forms of digital, or even printed, content. This phrase means the creator of the work reserves the rights to use and distribute it under copyright law. Copyright is a legal protection that gives creators ownership of their original works. In the digital world, these works include things like photos, videos, and music. Copyright prevents others from using these original works without permission. This means you can't just copy and paste images or download songs without potentially breaking the law. If you hold the copyright to a piece of digital media, you as the creator have the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, display, and create additional, alternate works based off of the original. If you want to use someone else's digital content, you usually need to get their permission or find content that's been specifically shared for public use.

While U.S. law deems copyright as automatic for creators, in order to have any legal protections the creator must register their content with the copyright office. This is an easy online procedure and ensures the protections of the creator over their content.

Public Domain Content

You may be wondering, if all original work is automatically covered by copyright law then how come you can still use plenty of digital content in your own work? This is because there is a large collection of work that never did or no longer holds copyright protections. This collection of works is considered to be in the public domain. Public domain content is free for anyone to use without permission. This can happen because the copyright expired, the creator intentionally placed the work in the public domain, or it was created by a government employee. You can use public domain images, music, or text in your projects without worrying about legal issues, making them valuable resources for creative work.

More specifically, in the United States copyright law protects original works for 70 years after the death of the creator, or for 95 years, whichever comes first. Works published before January 1, 1930 are automatically in the public domain. This is why a majority of digital content found in the public domain are older works, including the written works of Charles Dickens and Shakespeare, and media like the original Steamboat Willie and Winnie the Pooh.

Creative Commons Content

Rather than stating “All Rights Reserved” showing the work is protected under copyright, some work states “Some Rights Reserved” or show one of these symbols.

This means the work is protected under Creative Commons licensing. Creative Commons licensing gives anyone who creates original work the ability to grant the public use of the content under copyright law. Creators must choose to place their work under Creative Commons licensing for public use, and they have some options about what kinds of permissions they want to allow. The range from simply requiring attribution, to restricting commercial use and creating alternative works. Check out https://creativecommons.org/ for more information about the different licenses and their restrictions.