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Only the owner of the copyrighted work may change, reproduce, perform, display, or distribute it. Without copyright protection, there would be no economic incentive to create these works.
Although the
owner of the copyrighted work has exclusive rights to the work, a
provision known as
fair
use allows for reproduction of small
amounts of copyrighted material. Reproduction is allowed under
fair use when it has very little impact on the value of the
intellectual work.
An example of
fair use is quoting from a website or a
magazine article in a paper you are writing for a college course. In
this case you must acknowledge the original work by providing a
citation for the source.
Most
information is protected by copyright. The exception is work that is
in the "public domain". This type of information may be reproduced
or used by anyone, but it is still necessary to credit the source. Some examples of public
domain sources:
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