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What does copyright protect?
Copyright protects tangible and unique expressions of creativity. The key word here is expression. Copyright only applies to the concrete form in which literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, or compilations like dictionaries, are expressed. To be protected, a work must be fixed. This means that it must be in a definite form, one that has some permanence. Copyright doesn't protect intangible things like ideas or concepts.
In its simplest terms, copyright dictates who has the exclusive right to
- produce, reproduce, adapt or translate a work;
- publish an unpublished work (or any substantial part of it);
- perform or display a work in public;
- communicate a work, or transmit it by telecommunication;
- rent out a sound recording or computer program.
As you can see, copyright offers many different kinds of protection.
December 1998
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Content last reviewed 16:43, 17 October 2008.