Law lecture - copyright

Any work that you do belongs to you, for example, any article that you write belongs to you, you allow people to use it, usually in return for money. This is a mightily interesting concept. you can sell a copyright entirely, which is called a buy out, but if you sell it on you give up any rights to the material. This means that if you sell the entire copyright to an article the paper must only pay you once, but they can go on to use the article as many times as they want. The wierd bit is that this is applicable to buildings and such, though in the case of buildings it's usually a total buy out. There are ways round copyright though, this is known as FAIR DEALING/LIFTING. This revolves around a few key concepts, for example, there are no copyrights in the facts of news. Though the actual words may be copyrighted, the facts that formed them are free for everyone, you cannot copyright an idea. You can also get round copyright if you're doing it for the purposes of comment, criticism or review. This obviously effects book/film reviewing, where you can show a few seconds of the film that you're reviewing without being sued for breach of copyright. You cannot however pass this off as your own material though and the commercial availablity of the material must also be stated, for example say that the film is widely accessable or something. This is also the case with news footage, however you must talk over the footage, and credit the party that owns said footage. If all of these bases are covered than you cannot be sued because you've obeyed the rules of fair dealing. Copyrights do have an expiration date though, for literature, films and music scores the copyright expires 70 years after the authors death. For sound recordings (not scores) and broadcasts it's 50 years after the year in which the work was first created.