United States Copyright Law
The Copyright Law of the United States encourages the creation of art and culture by rewarding authors and artists with a set of exclusive rights. Federal Copyright law grants authors and artists the exclusive right to make and sell copies of their works, the right to create derivative works, and the right to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time limit, and generally expire 70 years after the author's death.
US Copyright law is governed by the federal Copyright Act of 1976. The constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to create copyright law. Specifically, Congress has the power:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, (the Copyright Clause)The United States Copyright Office handles copyright registration, recording of copyright transfers, and other administrative aspects of copyright law.
Read more about United States Copyright Law: Purpose of Copyright, Works Subject To Copyright Law, Exclusive Rights, Duration of Copyright, Limitations On Copyright and Defenses, Provisions For The Handicapped, Infringement, Public Domain, Orphan Works
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“Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)
“The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better.... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)