Using Protected Work Legally

If you create something original, the law gives you rights over it. Anyone else who wants to copy, share, sell or adapt it needs your permission first, and a licence is how that permission is usually given.

The owner decides

The owner of protected work can use, copy, sell and adapt it, and can decide who else is allowed to do each of those things. That control is the point of protection: a creator can earn from their work, so they keep creating.

Owning a copy is not the same as owning the work. Buying a printed walking map from a visitor centre gives you that copy of the map only — the rights to it stay with the person who drew it.

Permission through a licence

Other people may use protected work only with the owner's permission, normally given as a licence: an agreement setting out what you may do with the work. A licence can be paid for or free, so never assume permission must cost money, and it often comes with conditions — that it covers one computer, for instance, or that the work is not resold. Keeping to those conditions is what makes your use legal; break one and you are using the work without permission.

For example, a designer sells a knitting pattern for a toy rabbit. The pattern's licence lets you knit rabbits and sell the finished toys, but not sell or give away the pattern itself. Someone who posts the pattern on a craft forum has gone beyond the licence; someone who knits and sells rabbits has not.

When protection runs out

Protection does not last for ever. Once the copyright in a work has run out, the work is no longer protected and anyone may use it freely.