copyright

Pluralcopyrights (some meanings)

Formscopyrights, copyrighting, copyrighted

1. 1
   noununcountable

   A legal right giving its holder sole authority to decide who may publish, copy, or distribute a creative work such as a book, song, or image.

   Copyright protects authors from having their work reproduced without consent.

   Under current law, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus seventy years.

   Note

   A compound that explains itself: copy plus right, the right to make copies, and so the right to say who else may. In this general sense it usually takes no article and no plural. Copyright is a field of law, set apart from trademarks, and F. A. Hayek writes of "the law of copyright" in 1949. When you mean one holder's claim to particular works, you want the countable, ownable right.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An exclusive legal right covering one or more particular works, treated as a single ownable thing that can be bought, sold, or transferred.

   The studio acquired the copyright to the original screenplay before filming began.

   Several copyrights in the estate were transferred to the foundation after the author's death.

   Similarrights

   Note

   Here the right becomes a thing you can count, sign away and lose: an artist gives up the copyrights to her songs in a contract. The prepositions vary. You can hold copyrights to a catalog or, as Bill Mears's 2012 CNN report put it, copyrights on foreign works. One fixed phrase drops the article altogether: images that are "still copyright of the original artist" still belong to that artist.

3. 3
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To obtain or secure legal copyright protection for a literary, musical, or artistic work.

   The author copyrighted her manuscript before submitting it to publishers.

   Independent musicians often copyright before releasing any tracks.

   Note

   The verb works with or without an object. Used transitively, you copyright something: a book, a song, even a name, as J. J. Jameson demands for "Green Goblin" in Spider-Man (2002). Used intransitively, it names the activity itself, as in a 1907 House Committee on Appropriations text about publishers "going to the expense of copyrighting." Much of the everyday work falls to the participle copyrighted, as in a book that will be copyrighted.

4. 4
   nounnonstandarduncountable

   The act of breaking copyright law by copying or using protected work without permission.

   Reposting the photographer's images without credit is straight-up copyright.

   He got a warning that uploading the full album counts as copyright.

   Similarinfringement, piracy

   Note

   A clipped use in which the word stands for its own breach, short for copyright infringement. It turns up in the online disclaimer "no copyright intended" and even in news prose ("anyone accused of copyright"), but it is informal and nonstandard. In careful or legal writing, use copyright infringement in full. Readers expecting the legal right itself may otherwise take it to mean the opposite.

5. 5
   verbnonstandardtransitive

   To report someone's content as breaking copyright rules, typically to have it removed.

   The studio copyrighted the fan edit within hours of its upload.

   Big labels will copyright any clip that includes their tracks.

   Similarflag, report

   Note

   An informal use that turns the verb around. The one who copyrights here is not the author protecting a work but whoever flags someone else's upload. It is most at home in the passive, as in "I don't wanna get copyrighted," meaning to have one's content struck. Because it collides with the verb of securing protection, keep it to casual talk. Copystrike says the same thing without the ambiguity.

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