Understanding copyright: basic principles

Abstract

The underlying principle of copyright in New Zealand is that any person who creates an intellectual or artistic work is entitled to attribution and benefit from endeavour in the creation of that work. Copyright provides a set of exclusive rights to creators/copyright owners in relation to their works. It provides protection for the creator in the way that work is expressed, whether written, visual, or aural, but it doesn’t protect the knowledge or ideas that are an integral part of the work. Copyright protection is automatic under the Copyright Act 1994, it doesn’t require any form of registration, and exists at the point where a work is created. The development of the internationally recognised Creative Commons licencing system has enabled creators to more easily specify the terms of reuse for their own material, while maintaining the work’s public accessibility in an open access environment. The importance of balancing the rights of users and creators is acknowledged.