Understanding Copyright

In order to create the © (copyright sign) you need to press Alt+G for mac and for windows it's ctrl+alt+c.
Copyright give the owner the right to control their material and who uses it. Everyones work is automatically covered by Copyright, Design and UK patents act of 1998. These rights cover copying, adapting, distributing (electronic or otherwise) Communicating to the public (including on demand, live or broadcast) and public performance (busking etc). It also covers renting and lending. The kinds of materials that era covered by copyright are films, games, animations, music, computer apps and drawings/illustrations. you can basically copyright anything that has been produced by an  independent person or as a result of a collaborated effort. This includes stories, scripts, lyrics and other literary works. All content put on the internet in the UK is covered by these copyright laws. The person that owns the copyright piece generally is owned by the person who created it however if you have been asked to make something for a company, it is usually the company that would own or employer.  Copyright can be transferred, or sold to another party. However just because you own something doesn't mean you own the copyright e.g buying a painting, print or game. The rights have to be legally transferred to you. In the UK you do not have to legally register copyright as there isn't a system. Copyright laws generally last for 70 years but it can vary depending on what is copyrighted. You can get permission to use copyright products by contacting the copyright owner directly or you can go through an organisation who represents the owner. You don't always need to seek permission but generally if it is for commercial use you should. You can often use copyrighted materials for non-commercial, educational, research purposes or private study however this does not mean you can make copies.  You may want to mark your work so it is obvious to the public that the rights are own by you. You should mark it as © Your name and year of publication. To prove that you have originated the piece of work you should deposit the piece of work with a bank or solicitor or send a copy to yourself so that it has a clear postmark on it. You would the leave the envelope or package unopened. This would provide proof that it existed at that point in time. If someone is passing off your work as theirs you should talk to them first if that doesn't solve anything then you should take legal advice and proceed further by going to court if necessary. The same would apply if the content was online. International boundaries and copyright laws differ. It is recommended that you mark all pages describe previously and to what extent you will allow other to use you materials. If copyright misuse occurred outside of the UK you would have to take action using the laws of the country where the infringements took place. "Copyright is a play on words used to describe the practice of using copyright law to distribute copies and modified versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions free"- Wikipedia.

Creative Commons
Creative commons was founded by Lawrence Lessig in 2001, it is a non profit organisation that provide legal framework to allow people to 'share, remix, reuse - legally'. They provide standardised alternatives.  Unlike the all rights reserved way of © creative commons use different levels of licence that an owner of the work can apply.

Attribution - CC BY
This licence lets others distribute, remix, tweak and build upon your work. Even commercially as long as they credit you for the creation. This is the most accommodating of licences offered.

Attribution - ShareAlikeCC BY-SA
This licence lets others tweak, remix and build upon you work even for commercial purpose again as long as they credit you for the original piece and they have to licence their new creation under similar terms. This licence is used by Wikipedia and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

Attribution - NoDerivatives CC BY-ND
This licence allows redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution - NonCommercial CC BY-NC
This licence lets others remix, tweak and build upon your work non-commercially, they also must acknowledge you.

Attribution - NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA
This licence lets others remix, tweak and build upon non- commercially as long as they credit you and put their new creation under the same terms.

Attribution - NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC BY-NC-ND
This licence is the most restrictive of the six main licences, only allowing others to download you works and share them with others as long as they credit you. They can not change them in any way.

All the information I collected from a presentation presented to us last years. These are mainly the notes taken from it.