Copyright is a legal protection for original works, with restrictions and variations in different countries. The Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions are the main international laws, with different rules on protection and duration of copyright. Legal copyright also varies by country, with differences in requirements for tangible form and length of protection.
Copyright is a type of protection granted by law for certain types of original works. There are some restrictions and limitations on the types of works that can be registered for legal copyright and different laws are in effect in different countries. There are also international copyright conventions. The Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) are the main international copyright laws.
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was born on 8 September 1886 and was first completed on 4 May 1896. It has since been revised five times and was most recently amended on 28 September 1979. As of 2010, there were 164 parties to the convention. The Universal Copyright Convention was adopted on September 6, 1952 and revised on July 24, 1971. There are 65 parties to the convention, some of which are also parties to the Berne Convention. Both conventions are written to allow for individual variation between and between parties.
Legal copyright restrictions vary by country. For example, the Berne Convention states that it is up to specific countries to determine whether works “are not to be protected unless they have been fixed in some material form”. Indeed, in the United States, it is true that legal copyright cannot be obtained for a work until it has been posted in a ‘tangible form’. In other words, haiku fully developed in one’s head is not copyrighted in the United States. It receives legal copyright protection the moment it is, for example, written on a piece of paper.
There are also differences in the length of legal copyright for a work. For example, in some countries, the legal term of copyright is limited to the life of the author plus 50 years. In others, it’s the author’s life plus 70 years. In the United States, copyright law is complicated. In general, works published before 1923 are now considered to be in the public domain. Works published between 1923 and 1968 may or may not still be legally protected by copyright, depending on whether the copyright was renewed and/or whether the original publication had an appropriate copyright notice. So for some works, whether a legal copyright is in effect depends on where you are.
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