Now we're going to discuss copyrights basic structure of protection. And here it's important for us to draw a distinction between things that we've already discussed namely, copyrightability and copyrightable subject matter on the one hand. And copyright protection, which is what we're going to talk about in the next few lectures. Copyrightability, just as a reminder, includes all the threshold requirements for a work of expression to obtain copyright protection. Namely, the doctrine of originality, the doctrine of the idea/expression dichotomy, and very importantly the requirement of authorship. Copyrightable subject matter overlaps a little bit with that. But that basically includes, the idea that only original expression obtains copyright protection. That facts do not obtain copyright protection or ideas, principles, systems, similarly do not and cannot obtain copyright protection. Only expression can obtain copyright protection. So what then is copyright protection? And here's what we have to try and understand, what does it mean for a work to get copyright protection? The simple answer is, copyright protects works through granting exclusive rights to copyright holders or copyright owners. Historically, of course. The right to copy or the exclusive right to copy was the primary, if not only right that copyright owners got, and hence copyright got its name. So copyright was basically the exclusive right to copy. This raises the obvious question. What is an exclusive right, what does it say? What does it mean to say that there's an exclusive right to copy? An exclusive right put very simply, is the right to be the only one or the only person who can either do or authorize the doing of something, in relation to the work. Again to repeat, it means that there can only be one person, the copyright owner who can either do or authorize the doing of something in relation to the work. In fact, that's the language today seen in the copyright act of 1976 in section 106. That's how it defines the structure of the exclusive rights. So when you, the copyright owner, has an exclusive right. It means that you are the only one who can do something in relation to that right or you are the only one who can authorize someone else to do something in relation to that right. The natural converse of this is that when someone else does that thing in relation to the work. Without your permission, without the permission of the copyright owner, they are violating your right. And your right therefore of exclusivity or your exclusive right allows you to treat them as violators or infringers of your right which we call an infringement. And as the person who's doing it, the infringer, and allows you to take action against them, that´s copyrights basic structure. So to say that you have copyright protection, is to say that you, the copyright owner, have a set of exclusive rights in relation to the work. Which is a set of rights to do something or to authorize the doing of something in relation to that protected work. And again because the structure of exclusivity is suggesting that there can only be one. These exclusive rights are best understood through their violations in terms of understanding what it means to have violated someone's exclusive right. Very importantly under US Copyright Law under Section 106. Authors generally have six important exclusive rights in relation to a work. These are, the reproduction right, the adaptation right, or the derivative works right, the public distribution right. The public performance right, the public display right, and for sound recordings, the digital audio transmission right. Now very, very important point to note, not all of these rights attached to all categories of works. Some of these rights are specific to special categories of works, and this is something you need to bear in mind. Now of course, some of these rights, such as the reproduction right and the public distribution right, attach across the board to all categories of works. But some of them such as the digital audio transmission right or the public display right, attach only to certain categories of works. When we talk about those works I'll be sure to point this out. But for now, know that you need to pay a special attention to matching the rights with the categories of works, without necessarily assuming that they apply across the board. Of these six rights, without question the most important one is the reproduction right, which will jump into in a minute. But for now that is copyrights basic structure.
