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Copyright: Difference between revisions
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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.Copyright 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.Copyright, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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Copyright (©) is a special permission by the government granting to someone a special monopoly right in certain uses of a work of art. Now, some might disagree whether certain works have any value at all; but the law grants certain protections to any work someone creates, subject to certain restrictions, which is why lawyers who handle "intellectual property" tend to make a lot of money.
Copyright gives its owner the ability to restrict certain uses of a work of art (generally called just a "work" on this very wiki) for a certain period of time. Once that period of time expires, the work falls into the "public domain" and the ability to enforce restrictions ends. Note that this is the ''ability'' to enforce a restriction; the copyright owner can choose not to enforce some restrictions, which is why [[
The copyright owner is granted the ''right'' to stop certain uses, not the ''requirement'' to do so. This is different from [[Trademark|trademarks]]; if you don't "police" your mark (stop misuse of it), then if there is a lawsuit the court may declare your mark generic (allowing anyone to use it) because you didn't actively protect it, or abandoned (you stopped associating the mark with the good or service). This requirement is not applicable to copyright; the copyright owner is allowed to use that right selectively; they can ignore 4,000 violations and then successfully drop a hammer on the 4,001st; the fact they didn't go after the several thousand other unauthorized uses is not an issue the court is going to notice or care about. For instance, it was okay for [[JK Rowling|J.K. Rowling]] to approve the ''HP Lexicon'' when it was just a Web site, but she attempted to throw the book at its author when it was being made into a book. This is due to the fact that Trademark is governed by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution rather than the Copyright/Patent clause. Trademarks only have value insofar as they represent ''something else.'' Copyrighted works are valuable as themselves.
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