Blog / January 26, 2021 / by Kevin Solis

Why is copyright important in the digital world?

Before the digital world existed, copyrighting has been the best way to protect creativity of artists of any kind. The main reason this protection exist is because there were people with more influence power who stole other person’s idea and profit from it. As the digital world has evolved incredebly, you need to identify what actions might be considered of illegal use.

What is copyright?

Copyright is the legal and exclusive right to copy or allow the reproduction of certain specific artworks. If you own the legal right on something no one else can use it or copy it without your authorization.

Why is it important?

If you create content or art you have to deal with copyright law and related issues. As creator, you legally own the content. It is your decision whether you want others to use it but you need to understand and perform certain actions.

If you need to use other people’s content, you must understand the legal use of other’s creation.

Copyright law and its practical application exist to protect pioneer and genius pieces of artwork or other type of creations. There are a lot of debates around what’s original and not all issues have been resolved, but there are enough firm principles to allow you to take some time to protect yourself.

How can you copyright your work?

There’s a misunderstanding that you need to legally register in order to claim the ownership of something. However, you own the work the minute you have produced it.

Obviously, with legal registration you can get these benefits:

    • Legally determine that you are the copyright owner of the work.
    • Legally determine the creation date.
    • Take legal action against those who infringe your copyright

It is recommended to use the copyright sign © to let others know that a piece of art is copyrighted. The copyright symbol has no legal effect and has no magical effect on your copyright status. Forgetting to use it will not cause you to lose the rights associated with the things you created.

The copyright symbol has no legal effect nor magical effect on your copyright status. Forgetting to use it will not cause you to lose the rights associated with the things you created.

In order to sue others for infringement, you may want to register your copyright. Also, if you have no other way to prove the date of creation, registration is the best option.

What type of work can be copyrighted?

Copyright protection is for artistic creations. This includes:

    • Music: songs, arrangements, sheet music, recordings, etc.
    • Visual arts: painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, etc.
    • Writing: novels, poems, stories, news, dramas, blog posts, etc
    • Architecture
    • Choreographies
    • Computer Software
    • Movies

It’s important to know that you cannot copyright a tangible expression of an idea or a concept. For example, let’s say that you wrote a novel about a Romance between a human person and a Vampire. So, another novel writer can take the idea and must beware of what other elements he can not copy as: Title name, plot, characters or dialogues.

Other types of protection

There are other types of intellectual property protection as Trademarks and Patents:

Trademarks: involves words, names, symbols, designs, slogans, logos or combinations of these that identify business entities.

Patents: Involves physical and virtual (software) inventions and business processes.

There’s a lot more we can talk about copyright as it is a very complex topic and sometimes some cases end up in court for resolution. However we invite the audience to be responsible with the content they publish.

You can find a deeper analysis on “Copyright: The Ultimate Guide”.

 

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