Copyright:Official Documents/Theses and Dissertations/What is Copyright
What is Copyright?
Copyright is the sole and exclusive right of a copyright owner to produce, reproduce, perform, publish, adapt, translate and telecommunicate (e.g., post on the internet, email, etc.) a work, and to control the circumstances in which others may do any of these things.
Copyright law in Canada protects a wide range of works. Producing, reproducing, performing, publishing, adapting, translating and telecommunicating a “substantial” part of someone else’s copyrighted work is copyright infringement, unless (a) you fall within one of the exemptions set out in the Copyright Act, or (b) you have written permission from the copyright owner.
What is a "substantial" part of a work depends on numerous considerations, including:
- the work,
- the quantity of what is being copied,
- whether what is being copied forms a material or essential part of the work, and
- what purpose the copied portion will be put to.
It is commonly understood that, for most purposes, copying more than a few sentences of a literary work, a few words of a short poem, a few bars of music, or a few seconds of a film is a "substantial" portion of the work. Also, copying any important part of a painting, graph or table, etc., is a "substantial" portion of a work.
Copyright protection comes into effect as soon as a work is created; there is no requirement that the work be registered or that the word "copyright" or the symbol © appear on the work. Accordingly, works that are publicly available on the Internet (such as images found via Google) are treated the same way under copyright law as materials distributed in any other way. In Canada, generally speaking, copyright expires 50 years after the death of the author, regardless of who holds the copyright.
This means that, if you have started writing your thesis, then your draft is already protected by copyright, which gives you control over the ways in which it can and cannot be legally used by others. At the same time, this also means that you need to think very carefully about how you are using the works of others, and about whether or not you will need permission to quote from or include these works in your thesis.
(For more information about copyright in general, please see the Basics FAQ and the Copyright Guidelines for UBC Faculty, Staff, and Students.)