Ten Copyright Myths
At Ignite Dublin #4, held in TCD’s Science Gallery as part of last week’s Trinity Week celebrations, I gave a 20-slides-in-5-minutes presentation on Ten Copyright Myths, in part because the previous weekend saw the 300th anniversary of the first modern copyright statute, the Statute of Anne, 1710 (fascimile | transcript | wikipedia). For the day that’s in it, here’s a YouTube video of my presentation:
For those who don’t have 5 minutes to watch, here are the myths debunked:
- You don’t need to put the copyright symbol © on a text to claim copyright. All that matters is that the work is original.
- You don’t need to put it in an envelope and send it to yourself. If the work is original, then copyright just vests.
- There is no doctrine of fair use outside of the United States. Instead, there is a much more limited doctrine of fair dealing for the purposes of research or criticism.
- Just because something has been published on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s in the public domain. There’s a lot less in the public domain than you might think.
- Taking a work, and transforming it, still infringes copyright.