Glossary
- copyright protection
- Copyright restriction. A monopoly power used to prevent people from sharing copies of things they already have, and from making derivative works or remixes based on their copies.
- rights owner
- Someone with a government-granted monopoly on duplication of a particular work.
- piracy
- Making copies from a source you already have, without waiting for a third party's permission. Also: forcibly boarding a ship on the high seas, threatening or taking hostage its crew, and stealing its cargo.
- fair use
- What all uses once were. Today, refers only to uses that do not interfere with a monopoly-based business models.
- music-sharing
- Sharing music, as humans have done throughout history. Sometimes called file-sharing, when the music is shared via a computer network.
- plagiarism
- Claiming credit for someone else's work. This is unrelated to copying and making derivative works.
- intellectual property
- A catch-all category that lumps together trademarks (a legal device for preventing identity confusion) with copyrights (monopoly on the distribution of culture) and patents (monopoly on the use of ideas). Since trademark law actually has much more to do with anti-fraud laws, it might be better to refer to that category as intellectual integrity law, to copyrights and patents as intellectual monopoly law, and avoid the term intellectual property altogether.
- theft or stealing
- The act of taking something in such a way that the original possessor loses it. Contrast with copying, in which a new thing is created that is similar to, or the same as, a thing that the original possessor continues to have afterwards.