I accidently stole what?

After attending my law lecture of the week, the whole class soon realised that clicking on Google images and pasting into our own work is by no way permissible due to copyright law so regretfully, like most of my fellow class mates I have had to scroll through and delete any image you could say, I have stolen.

Accredited to Horia Varlan

Copyright is a legal concept enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original piece of work, exclusive rights to it. The copyright holder has the right to be credited for their work.

Copy right has existed in the UK and US common law since the early 18th century. It is an intellectual property, a residual right that every citizen has, not to have their work stolen and exploited by others. This property right is protected in the same was as any other right.

Any work produced by you belongs to you until you sell that work or license that work out to someone else. This includes physical work, provision of a service and intellectual work such as journalism work, literary work and photography. Licensing can be done through people paying you or giving consent for you to use it. Those who give out their work for free are known as "common contributors" who allow people to use their work as long as they abide by a few conditions such as accrediting their work or website.

Another way of using someone's work, other than through consent is through fair dealing. This technically and in theory means that you are allowed to steal property. This is through a process called "lifting." You ARE allowed to lift facts from stories as these are no-ones property as long as you do not lift any quotes as this is breaching the concept of fair dealing. You can also use content from pieces of work by others as long as it is for comment, criticism or review, and that it is "packaged" as one of these three. As long as you keep it brief, accredit the source as well as the commercial availability, mention the full work and in no way try to claim it as your own, it is kept legal. Fair dealing is used for private research purposes, criticism and news reporting as well as being used for copies kept in libraries.

An easy concept to remember is simply "Make it yourself. If you've made it you own it"