In this internet age, when so many of us are self-publishers, the issue of copyright is a burning one. Copyright plays a vital role in encouraging, as well as protecting, creative talent. Everyone who writes online, or enjoys publishing their music or art on social media platforms, should have a vested interest: after all, copyright guards the intellectual and economic rights of the creators of everything from blogs and websites to songs and books. And if you get paid for the work you produce, copyright can help you to develop your creativity – not to mention giving up the day job.
The first form of copyright protection can be traced back to the 15th century, when printing was invented. Prior to this, manuscripts were copied by hand, usually by monks, a painfully slow process largely reserved for texts that concerned religious orders and the royal courts of Europe.
The 1709 Statute of Anne, passed into law on 10 April 1710, first gave books the protection of an act of parliament. This trailblazing copyright statute – named after Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs and the first British sovereign – was the first to recognise the legal right of authorship. It asserted that an individual's copyright could be infringed by any person who printed, reprinted or imported a book without consent. Over time, the umbrella of copyright protection was extended to cover many other works including paintings, photos, maps, music, films and, most recently, digital innovations.
Copyright protection is now automatic, offering an essential creative and financial safeguard, particularly in a world where artists and writers can publish their work immediately online. It's still impossible to copyright ideas, but as soon as you've recorded your "light-bulb moment" in some way (writing down a book synopsis, for example), copyright kicks in to protect those words. This ensures that as long as your work is original, it cannot be used or reproduced without your permission. This also means that you can charge others for the right to use whatever you've created.
Because copyright is automatic, there is no formal system in the UK for registering it. Using the copyright symbol followed by the name of the copyright owner and the year in which the work was first published is most common, and works particularly well for bloggers, but you can also lodge your work with a reliable third party, such as a bank or solicitor, to provide evidence of the date that it was created.
The principles of British copyright law and the reality of 21st-century internet communication may seem at odds, but if you create work to share online, it's crucial that you get to grips with your intellectual rights. Although many online users (particularly "free culture" advocates) have campaigned for greater freedom from copyright restrictions, there is also a growing understanding that unauthorised content copying really does harm individual artists, particularly if their art is their living.
The debate about the internet's "openness" compared to the pre-digital, copyright-protected world affects everyone from the occasional blogger to self-publishers of ebooks. The legitimate limits to copyright are still being tested by the internet, but taking steps, as an individual, to protect your intellectual property is the best way to shield your artistic rights. It's important to know, for example, that the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 awards copyright owners exclusive rights which include copying work they've produced, issuing copies of it to the public, performing, showing or playing it in public, and making it available online. So the more you know and understand about copyright, the better it is for your creative freedom – and for your bank balance.
