Copyright is a law that tells us that we have to respect artists’ rights and their work. Its like plagiarism, just on the web. Its not very old at all, actually it is kind of a newer internet law. It is important because other people can claim the artists’ work as their own and take all the credit for it, and they could get money from it. Its also important because if you make a good piece of work, you should be able to share that with the world, but not handing it out for the public to use. You can copyright things like music, books, movies, art, sculptures, brands, recipes, and more.

Without copyright laws, anyone and everyone could claim someone else’s work as their own. The real artist would lose all credit to their piece, whatever it may be, and they would no longer make money off it. The person who claimed it would possibly get money for it and they would also have the credit of a good piece of work.

Public domain means we are allowed to use something that someone else created after their death plus another seventy years! Another thing that kind of relates to the public domain is fair use. The fair use of someone else’s work is using ten seconds of it for a specific use, like a parody or if you want a small clip of a song for example for a video.

Probably one of the best things about copyright is that you get to decide if you want the public to use your work or not, and it does into detail. This is called Creative Commons. This is a license that you can put on your work that tells the public what they can use of it. You can put a license on it that tells the people they can use your work but for example they aren’t allowed to get money from it, or they have to give credit to the artist.

Copyright is one of the best things to protect the internet. It makes sure everyone’s work is always theirs, until they die +70 years. Without it, no one would rally know who’s work was who’s.

 * sara .