And, we actually have a Supreme Court case that really was about this very point.
That court case is Feist v.
Rural Telephone.
And it set the standard for originality, which is quite frankly low.
>> Mm-hm. >> But
there is originality that is required.
So a protected work must not be copied from an earlier work, but
it also must have a spark of human creativity.
The copyright law doesn't protect what is sometimes called sweat of the brow,
the effort that may go in to compiling something.
So in the Feist case the, the issue was really a phone book.
And if you think of a phone book, while it takes a lot of effort, sweat of the brow,
to compile that phone book, the phone book isn't original.
It's in a very logical format.
Because if it wasn't in a very logical format, it wouldn't be of use to anyone.
>> It'd be useless.
>> It would very much be useless.
So, that's a good thing to kind of keep in mind when you start really thinking about
what is the level of originality that is required.
>> So unlike the phone book, we know that Joanna's text,
drawing, and videos are certainly original enough to meet that standard,
and they fall into the subject matter categories.
>> Mm-hm. >> For copyright protection.
So we're quite confident that Joanne,
as an author, owns copyright in that material.
But what does she own?
Again, the copyright law gives us a list of the exclusive rights
that an author gets in section 106.
Joanne controls the right to do basically
five things in regard to the materials that she has created.
She owns the right to make copies of that material,
the right to distribute those copies, the right to publicly perform the work.
So her video for example is something that can be publicly performed and
that right is exclusively hers.
She can grant other people permission, but it's her right.