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What Can Be Copyrighted?
4:23Can you copyright all of a website or just parts of it? How about a company name or logo? And what about fonts? We'll take a quick tour of what can and cannot be copyrighted.
[male narrator[ So what can you copyright?
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Can you copyright a whole website or just the code of it?
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Can you copyright a shirt, a tree?
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Hey, Fred.
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[Fred] Yeah.
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[male narrator] I just copyrighted you.
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I didn't just copyright Fred.
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You can't copyright a person.
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So what can you copyright?
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Websites, the code, the design, and the content.
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Mobile apps, iPhone apps, Android apps, you name it.
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Videos and movies, songs, recordings of songs—those are 2 different things.
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Any kind of original text, including books, articles, website and advertising copy, and song lyrics.
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Paintings, sculptures, photographs.
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Drawings, video games, fonts—sort of, we'll come back to that in a second.
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Plugins.
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Frameworks, software, choreography, dance routines if you've recorded it.
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Buildings, actual buildings.
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Lots of stuff—creative stuff.
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Everytime you snap a photo on your smartphone,
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that's beautiful,
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it's copyright you, this one's copyright me.
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Just building a website incorporates all sorts of those things.
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From the code and design to photography, the actual text on the website,
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a lot of the frameworks and software you use to create and to host it.
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All sorts of stuff.
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Are you starting to see why copyright's important?
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It's not just for the things you make,
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but also understanding how to work with the copyrighted materials of others.
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We'll be covering that in more detail in the next stage.
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So wait, what can't be copyrighted?
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Fred cannot be copyrighted.
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What else?
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Anything not fixed in a tangible form of expression.
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So what does that mean?
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Basically, it means ideas.
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Like we discussed already, you can't just say that you thought of something first.
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So it's not enough to have a great idea for an app.
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You actually have to make it, you have to put it into that tangible form of expression.
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Titles and slogans.
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You can't copyright the title of a movie, of a book, an app,
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a website, a business, or a song.
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Fonts.
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I know, I said you could copyright fonts.
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But you sort of can't.
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But you totally can.
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It's complicated.
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Basically, when we're talking about fonts,
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we're really talking about 2 different things.
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A typeface is the design of the actual letters and numbers.
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A font is really a piece of software that tells your computer to display a typeface.
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So the design of the letters, the shape of them, the typface is not covered by copyright law.
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But you can copyright software.
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And a font, as a piece of software, is covered by copyright.
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Basically, you should always assume when working with a font on the web,
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that the font is copyrighted.
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We'll talk a little bit more about fonts when we get to licensing later on.
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Familiar symbols, that includes numbers and the alphabet.
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Can you imagine if the alphabet was copyrighted and everybody had to pay to use it?
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The person who owned the copyright would be rich, but that wouldn't work out so well for the rest of us.
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Works created by the United States government.
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That includes laws, speaches given by the President, reports, that sort of thing.
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Facts.
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I know that's sort of weird, but any sort of common knowledge.
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You can't copyright the fact taht the sun comes up in the morning and sets in the evening, I'm sorry.
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Fashion.
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Actual clothes, believe it or not, are not copyrightable.
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The design printed on them might be copyrighted,
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but fashion designs aren't.
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Still, copying some else's runway design is a major fashion faux pas.
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Ingredients and recipes.
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Though if you make a cook book, you can copyright the photos, the descriptions, and other text.
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But the recipe itself is not copyrightable.
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Blank media.
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Nothing on it—not copyrightable.
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And domain names.
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So you got all that?
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You see the difference?
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Take a quiz and prove it to me.
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