Setting Your Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted and recognized by most governments, giving exclusive rights to the creator of an original work, usually for a limited time. The term itself generally means "the right to copy," but also gives the copyright holder rights to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights.
While no creative work is automatically protected worldwide, there are international treaties that provide protection automatically for all creative works as soon as they are fixed in a medium. There are two primary international copyright agreements: the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and theBuenos Aires Convention.
You, as the creator, are both the copyright holder and publisher of all works created and distributed using the tools and services available on the Lulu.com website. Therefore, when creating your work's copyright page, you should list yourself as the copyright holder and publisher. If you wish, you may list Lulu as the distributor.
Set your project's Copyright License as you are completing the Description step of Lulu's Publishing Wizard. Click the drop down box to the right of "License" to select the Copyright license of your choice.
Authors should research the copyright requirements for the countries in which they intend to make their work available and select accordingly from the following list of copyright options.
- Standard Copyright License
The length of Copyright varies in length by jurisdictions. The length of the term can depend on several factors, including the type of work (e.g. musical composition, novel), whether the work has been published, and whether the work was created by an individual or a corporation. In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. In the United States, the term for most existing works is a fixed number of years after the date of creation or publication.
List of countries’ length of copyright
- Public Domain
Under modern law, most original works of art, literature, music, etc. are covered by copyright from the time of their creation and extending for a set period of time. When the copyright expires, the work enters the public domain. The term indicates that these materials are therefore "public property", and available for anyone to use for any purpose. The laws of various countries define the scope of the public domain differently; making it necessary to specify which jurisdiction's public domain is being discussed.
- Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known asCreative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between the copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner.
Click the links below for easy to understand, one-page explanations of each Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
- GNU Free or Open-source Software Documentation
Documentation for free software should be free documentation so that people can redistribute it and improve it along with the software it describes. To make it free, you need to release it under a free documentation license. If you have already started your project, but are unsure what type of free documentation license you need, click on the links below for additional information.
GNU Free Documentation License
GNU General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
- Create a Custom License
Enter the name and URL for the license in the pop-up window and click accept.