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Author's Rights and Publishing

What are Economic Rights for Authors?

Authors have exclusive and immediate ownership over any work that they produce. This ownership comes with a bundle of rights that includes the ability to control circumstances related to the

  • Reproduction of the work
  • Dissemination of the work
  • Public display of the work
  • Use of the work to create derivative works
  • Granting of permission for others to use the work in the above ways

When a work is co-authored, all authors are co-owners of the copyright in the work. When a work is made for hire, the work is owned by the employer. Details on the ownership of work is defined in the U.S. Copyright law, which is Title 17 of the United States Code.

What rights do authors NOT have?

Authors do not have the right to forbid any copying of a work.  For the purposes of education, satire, and commentary, other people are allowed to use portions of your work under Fair Use.    

Fair Use allows for the use of copyrighted work by others. Fair use is determined by the following factors:

  1. The purpose of use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work.
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.