From LQWiki

Copyright is a form of intellectual property. Copyright is the conventional form of legal protection used by software developers. It forbids verbatim (among other forms) copying of a protected work without the copyright holder's permission. Keep in mind that the author or creator of a copyrighted work is not neccassarily the copyright holder!

Although the hacker community has been described as hostile to copyrights, copyleft depends on a strong enforcement of copyright laws. What the hacker community is against is extremely long terms of copyright protection afforded by the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act. It is the belief of the hacker community that a large Creative Commons of public domain works is vital to the continual progress of arts and sciences.

In theory, a work is copyrighted from the moment pen is set to paper (or cursor to screen, as the case may be), but an author or creator may have a hard time proving a work is theirs unless it is registered with the Library of Congress.

You may use copyrighted works under fair use, although End User License Agreements (EULAs) may take some fair use rights away. EULAs have somewhat questionable legallity though.

External links

• The US government provides details regarding US copyright law and procedures. (www.copyright.gov)
• Something aproximating a definition of copyright (www.copyright.gov)
• Wikipedia article on copyrights (en.wikipedia.org)