Copyright

Under the terms of Copyright Law, Central Print will be unable to re-produce any document which displays the following symbol © copyright, unless prior written consent has been obtained and provided.

A copyright is a law that gives the owner of a written document, book, picture, or other creative work, the right to decide what other people can do with it. Because of copyright, a work can only be copied if the owner of the copyright gives permission.

People who copy work that is protected under copyright without permission can be punished by the law, usually with a fine. In other, more serious cases, a person who copies work that is protected under copyright could be arrested and go to prison.

Length of Copyright Protection

Copyright Laws usually only protect the owner of copyright for a set period, such as 50 years. This period has now been extended to 70 years in most cases. When the period of copyright protection has ended, the written document, book, picture, or other creative work is in the public domain. This means that no one owns the copyright to them, and everyone is free to copy, use and change them without having to ask for permission or pay the owner.

There is an exception to the rules of copyright, called fair use. This means that people can copy a very small amount of a work to use in reviews or in research reports.

An example of fair use is when a newspaper writers quote several sentences from a copyright-protected document to tell the story. Another example of "fair use" is when a university professor quotes several sentences from a copyright-protected book in a review of the book, or in a research report.