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Copyright Information:
Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. 17 U.S.C. 102(a).
and,
A work is "fixed" in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. 17 U.S.C. 101.
What this means in simple terms is that as soon as you've created your original work, it's copyrighted. Because of the "either directly or with the aid of a machine or device" provision, it doesn't matter whether you've printed it out, or if it's only on your hard drive or floppy disk.
You don't need any special formalities, such as registering the work with the Copyright Office, or providing a copyright notice (notice stopped being a requirement when the U.S. signed the Berne Convention and enacted Berne Convention Implementation Act in 1988.
The law of copyright duration has undergone many twists and turns. There have been several major changes in copyright duration law that contribute to this complication:
- the number of years used in calculating durations has changed, from either 28 or 56 to either 50, 75 or 100, depending on the type of work.
- the basis for determining the endpoint of a copyright has changed; it used to be measured based on when the work was published, now it's based on when the work's author dies, or sometimes on when the work was created and/or when it was published.
- There used to be multiple copyright terms, and if the copyright was not renewed at the end of the first term, it lapsed. Today, except as a minor hangover from the past, there is a single copyright term; renewal is not required.
- Not all the provisions changed at the same time. For one thing, although the Copyright Act of 1976 did not go into effect until 1978, well before the draft of the new law was complete, it was likely that the new statute would extend duration of copyright. Congress apparently wanted to minimize the impact on authors who would otherwise lose the benefit of the extended duration, and through a series of several special purpose laws (Public Laws 87-668, 89-142, 90-141, 90-416, 91-147, 91-555, 92-170, 92-566 and 93-573, and section 304(b) of the 1976 Copyright Act), delayed the expiration of copyrights that would otherwise have occurred in the 1962 - 1978 interim. The net cumulative effect is as if the duration provisions had begun to take effect in 1962, 16 years earlier than the rest of the Act. For another thing, even when the concept of multiple "copyright terms" was discarded, for a long time, works that were still in their first term of copyright still needed to be renewed to avoid going into public domain. This requirement remained in place until it was finally removed in 1992 (by P.L. 102-307, 106 Stat. 264).
So while the law at anyone time has always been pretty simple, the cumulative effect of the changes have made the deceptively simple question "how long does a copyright last?" quite complicated to answer.
For More Information on Copyright Laws see The ILTguide to Copyright