Information about copyright

What is copyright? 

Copyright is a legal concept that grants any individual who engages in creative work the exclusive right to decide how the work they have created is used. It thereby ensures writers, artists, composers and other creators have the ability to earn an income from their creative work. Copyright also aims to protect the investments made in creative work. 

When you draw a picture, write a story, compose a piece of music, or make a movie, you are a creator with the right to decide how the work you have created may be used. Copyright comes into effect immediately. You have the right to protection without having to register your work or use of the © symbol.

Copyright is based on national law which draws upon international conventions. There are many international treaties that extend protection also to works and objects that carry related rights, from other treaty states. Ireland has signed up to these treaties. They include the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations, the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) and the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances.

The central principles of these international treaties are: 

• ‘minimum protection’ for original creative work, under which the states signed up to the treaties must, in their own national laws, introduce at least the minimum level of protection determined by the convention. 
• ‘national treatment’, under which works created in other treaty states must be given at least the same rights as the country’s own legislation gives to locally created works.  

As a member of the EU, Ireland’s domestic legislation is also governed by EU copyright directives, in which required legal protection, in some respects, is greater than the level required by international treaties. In practice, almost all work created outside Ireland enjoys the same level of copyright protection as domestic material.