What Is Copyright?

Copyright is a form of intellectual property right, which protects the economic and moral rights of the copyright holder.

The economic rights are the potential to benefit from the creative effort that went into the work. To protect these economic rights, copyright prohibits anybody else from doing any of the following things without the copyright holder’s permission:

Reproducing the work (eg by photocopying, scanning, transcribing or recording it)
Distributing the work (whether for free or for profit)
Performing the work
Adapting the work

It is possible to sell or hand over your economic rights to another party (known as assigning copyright) or to licence the permission to carry out the prohibited acts. In addition, there are a number of exceptions allowing others to make use of your work which will be discussed elsewhere in this guidance.

Moral rights include the right to have work attributed correctly to the author (and not to have work falsely attributed to you); the right to object to derogatory treatment; and the right to privacy. These rights cannot be sold or handed over but can be waived.

Copyright protection comes into being when you create an original, creative work and it does not have to be registered for you to benefit from its protection.

The following types of work are protected by copyright:

Original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, including illustration and photography
Original non-literary written work, such as software, web content and databases
Sound and music recordings
Film and television recordings
Broadcasts
The layouts of published editions of written, dramatic and musical works

Other types of work are not protected by copyright but may be protected by other forms of intellectual property right.

Copyright is time-limited. Where copyright has expired or the copyright holder has renounced all rights over it, a work is said to be in the public domain.

In the UK, copyright is controlled by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.