Copyright Laws - What rights For Copyright Owners? The copyright laws give authors of original works of authorship the right to control all further reproduction and publication of the work. This right attaches the second that the original work is originally created and fixed in a "tangible medium of expression."

The United States Copyright Act grants the author six exclusive rights including (1) the right to reproduce the work, (2) the right to create derivative works based upon the original work, (3) the right to distribute copies of the original work (sale,rental,license, assignment, or otherwise), (4) the right to publicly perform the work, (5) the right to display the work, and (6) the right to prevent distortion, modification, or mutilation of the work.

This means that the author has the right to stop other parties from (1) making copies of the work, (2) making changes to the work or creating new works based on the original work, (3) distributing the work, (4) publishing the work, (5) licensing the work to others, and (6) otherwise exploiting the work.

These exclusive rights are subject to certain limitations. One of these limitations is the "fair use" exception. The fair use exception permits use of a work, even without the consent of the author or copyright owner, for certain limited purposes. These limited purposes include uses for criticism, comment, teaching, news reporting, scholarship or research.

Other limited exceptions to the author's exclusive rights exist. This includes the right to publicly perform musical composition subject to payment of royalties and the right to re-record previously published musical compositions subject to payment of statutory mechanical royalties to the owner of the copyright. Once the author of a musical work publishes the work, the work can be re-recorded by others. However, mechanical royalties which are set by statute, must be paid to the copyright owner.

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