Copyright: The act of making beneficial use of somebody elses intellectual work.
For a journalist, it is vital to avoid falling victim to copyright laws. These laws are rapidly changing although they have existed for around 200 years.
'Intellectual work' comprises of music, film, typographical arrangements (the exact words from somebody elses piece of writing), sound recordings, photographs, artistic or dramatic works as well as many more. Mcnae quotes a judge as once saying 'anything worth copying is worth protecting' and I think that this sums up the necessity for copyright laws quite nicely.
During the lecture Chris used an analogy about a garden shed. If you are building a shed, then the shed belongs to you, however when you sell this shed you lose all rights to the shed. Even if the shed is then sold on for a thousand times its original price, you are not entitled to anything.
This can be linked to a freelance journalist, who has just written an investigative article. If he then sells this to a leading newspaper, who put it on their front page and make millions from it, he has sold the copyright and is therefore not entitled to anything. If however this journalist published the article on his blog, and a leading newspaper copied it, this would be illegal, and the freelance journalist would be able to sue; and probably win.
A journalist working for a company will nearly always have signed a contract stating that they surrender any rights to commercial exploitation of their work. This means that after writing and submitting a story, it is owned by the company. These journalists are paid in wages rather than commission from their stories.
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