You created your work; you own the copyright on it, right?

Right.

But just what is copyright?

To put this complex subject (very) simply, copyright is a creation of government; a law – modified over the past century and expanded through international conventions to become a near-worldwide right – that gives the creators of copyrighted works an exclusive right to license and/or sell their work to others, and stop wrongful infringement by third parties, i.e. the copying and exploitation of their work without their permission. Common examples of copyright infringement are pirate copying of movie DVDs, unauthorised file sharing of songs on the Internet, or plagiarism (passing off another’s work as one’s own).

Copyright ownership is automatically assigned to you as creator of a work under law. (Note: The only exception to this is if during the course of employment for a company you create a work, in which case ownership of that work would likely fall to your employer.)

More about international copyright:

What we can say is that copyright is a nigh-on worldwide right; well-established, automatic, and internationally recognised, established by agreements like the Berne Convention (1886), the Universal Copyright Convention (1952), and The World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) (1994), have nigh-on a hundred and eighty signatory states between them.  So while not every country in the world has participated in these treaties, it does mean copyright is almost universal.

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