There are myths about copyright that need to be busted.
Everything comes down to copyrights in writing. When anything is that central to an industry, it is bound to develop its own set of myths and legends. Copyright has many myths surrounding it, and it gets more convoluted when considered in a worldwide context. For the purposes of this article, we are focusing on the law in the United States.
The last time changes were made to the copyright law was in 1976. In the update, they made copyright good for the life of the author plus 50 years. Since the advent of the internet, cases have been forced to conform to the laws of traditional media instead of new laws being created.
Myth: You can use someone else’s story, as long as you are not charging for it.
First, it would still be violating someone else’s copyright to use their work without giving them proper credit or doing any of your own work. Taking another person’s work is theft.
Could a case be made that its not copyright infringement? It will depend on how the work is being used. Not every not-for-profit education use will be deemed fair, not every for-profit use will be deemed copyright infringement. A for-profit piece that transforms the original content into something new would be considered fair use.
Myth: Posting the work on Facebook or social media means it is in the public domain.
Posting anything on the internet does not automatically make it owned by the public. While it is shared much easier than in years past, the copyright stays with the content creator.
If an author chooses to put their work in the public domain, they would need to use some very specific words. They would need to say something like “The rights to this book belong to the public domain,” or phrasing that would be very similar.
Myth: Writers need to copyright important names to make sure no one else can use them.
This one is a tad trickier than the others. The character’s name cannot be copyrighted. There are billions of people in the world, it would not be fair to them if a writer was allowed to copyright a name.
However, a character is still covered under copyright laws. Many people have famously used characters from the Sherlock Holmes canon to create new works without permission from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate. Sherlock Holmes stories prior to 1923 are all in the public domain, the stories published after are covered by copyright until 2022–2023. Characters, events, stories in the public domain are open for writers to use as they want. Which has created quite the headache for lawyers.
Myth: Copyright needs to be announced and bought before it takes effect.
This is patently false. Anytime a writer creates something, they automatically own the copyright. Nothing else needs to be done with it.
The United States Copyright Office will allow you to register the copyright in their office but that step is not a necessary one to take. Doing this gives the holder a presumption of ownership of the copyright, something that was much harder to come by in the pre-internet days.
Myth: Fanfiction is appreciation and free advertising for them and not copyright infringement.
Fanfiction does, in fact, violate copyright laws. Writing in the world or with characters created by someone else is copyright infringement. That is a hard truth.
Another hard truth is, most copyright holders won’t mind it at all. Some will and enforce laws to shut down stories based in their world that are not written by them. However, there are copyright holders like Paramount that encourage fans to create art based on their universe. Star Trek short films are enormously popular in that fandom. Producers and stars have been known to watch the flicks with the fans. There are just a few rules that have to be followed, primarily don’t do it for the money.
The beast known as copyright is huge. There are many more layers to this issue and deserve to be tackled. Just not all at once.
