The Five Basic Rights of Copyright Owners

Under federal law, copyright owners have the exclusive right to do and authorize others to do the following:

  • To reproduce the work

  • To prepare derivative works based on the work

  • To distribute copies of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending

  • To perform the work publicly (in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works)

  • To display the work publicly (in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture of other audiovisual work)

  • In the case of sound recordings, ...

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