Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. It is legal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the Act to right owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. There are limitations on these rights. In some cases, this limitation is the doctrine of “fair use”, which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the Act. In other instances, the limitation takes the form of a “compulsory license” under which certain limited uses if copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory conditions. A copyright now lasts for the author’s lifetime plus 70 years from the end of the year in which the author has died due to the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act of 1988. A copyright protects the form in which the idea was expressed, though not the idea itself. Copyright law has now extended into the computer digital age under the GATT agreement that all nations have agreed to protect computer programs as a literacy work. Copyright law also covers all digitally recorded information to include programs, data, and databases to stop people from using works by many people without the poayment of higher royalties to the author. Internet copyright law protects all original pr purchased material from being copied and used for any purpose. With the great vast access to the internet, copyright is become more important. This is because it is pretty easy to copy and paste the material people need from one website to their own website or assignments. If people do not want to face litigation proceedings in a court of law, they should know if something is copyrighted. It is pretty easy to notice that any published copy with the copyright or not. User in public can simply found that the copy with a symbol © with a name of the copyright owner and the date of publication.
Copyright and computer software
Copyright and computer software is a volatile mixture, which has been known to provoke passionate arguments especially in the area of parallel importation. Current Australian law dictates that importing legal copies of software without the permission of the Australian copyright owner amounts to the same offence as illegally reproducing copies in Australia. If a company is found to have infringed the copyright owned by another party, the directors or managers of that company may be found personally liable for such infringements by authoring or procuring such conduct