Subject areaRules, risk and compliance
Copyright is the legal protection of creative works, such as texts, images, music, photographs, software and databases: it gives the author the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute and adapt them, and to authorise others to do so.
Protection arises when the work is created, with no registration, and in the European Union it lasts for the author's life plus seventy years. The © symbol with the holder's name and the year shows who owns the rights; the phrase «all rights reserved» says every use must be requested.
Anglo-American copyright and European author's rights differ in approach. The former mainly protects the economic exploitation of a work; the latter adds moral rights, such as the right to be credited as author, which stay with the author even after the economic rights are transferred. The international framework is the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and in the European Union the most recent reference is Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright in the Digital Single Market.
The topic is back in the spotlight with generative AI: the site's articles list «AI bias in business and copyright» among the concerns of entry-level team members. Creative Commons offers a middle path, «some rights reserved», through which the author grants certain uses in advance.
Source: Legge 22 aprile 1941, n. 633 (Italia); Direttiva (UE) 2019/790 del 17 aprile 2019; Convenzione di Berna del 1886.
An example
A financial institution has a generative AI write the text of a brochure: before publishing it, the institution checks that the text does not reproduce protected passages by other authors, the risk the site's articles link to copyright in AI adoption.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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