6 Citing Sources: And then there's Copyright

Copyright
	Copyright insures that the person who created something--whether a book or a piece of music--is reimbursed for his intellectual work. If there were no copyright protection, there would be no economic incentive to create these works.

A copyright is a set of legal rights that an author has over his/her work for a limited period of time. Copyright covers everything from using images or sound files from the Web to photocopying.

Most information is protected by copyright. The exception is work that is in the "public domain, " which can be reproduced or used by anyone. However, you still must credit the author. Some examples of public domain sources:

Public Domain Sources	Examples
Publications of the U.S. Government		U.S. laws and other publications of the Federal government, the U.S. Constitution. Canadian government publications ARE copyright protected.
Copyright has been waived by the author.		Software called freeware
Works on which the copyright has expired		Works by William Shakespeare

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Original (c) UNBLILT material 2003-2004 by the University of New Brunswick Libraries, Instruction Services Group. UNBLILT incorporates material from Searchpath, a tutorial developed by Western Michigan University 2001-2002, and from TILT, a tutorial developed by the Digital Information Literacy Office for the University of Texas System Digital Library 1998-2002. This material may be reproduced, distributed, or incorporated only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the UNBLILT, Searchpath, and TILT Open Publication Licenses.