What Copyright Infringement Means (In Plain English)

What Is Copyright Infringement?

To understand what copyright infringement is, you first have to understand what copyright is.

Copyright exists to protect creative work. Creative works are things you typically think of such as, music, video, graphic design, sculpture and art. However, they are also things like literature that you might give away as a downloadable PDF.

Copyright exists to protect those things for a limited amount of time. The owner of the copyright is the only one with the right to copy, distribute, publish, or otherwise exploit (exploit is the key term) the work protected by copyright.

Therefore, copyright infringement is copying, distributing, recording, etc, exploiting the copyright without the permission of the owner.

• It doesn't have to be for profit.

• You don't have to be making money from it.

• You don't have to be selling something.

Copyright infringement is - plain and simple - the unauthorized exploitation or copying of the copyrighted works.

Wondering what copyright holes may be showing up in your content?

Head to spear-ip.com/quiz to find out what legal blindspot is secretly killing your business. I had so much fun designing this quiz and I know that a lot of people feel like they don't know what they don't know this is for you. This quiz will help you to identify that legal blind spot and how to fix it.