Copyright questions are rarely easy. Even the simple questions don’t always have straightforward answers: What kinds of works are protected? What does it mean to be protected? Under current federal copyright law, both of those fundamental questions have enormously complex answers.
Although copyright evolved through the English common law and was adapted by into state common law in the United States, it is now primarily governed by federal statutes. As a practical matter, only those categories of works covered by the federal statute (listed in §102(a) of the Copyright Act) are protected. “Protection” gives the owner of the copyright certain specific, exclusive rights (subject to statutory exceptions), which the owner can prevent others from exercising without permission. But just to keep things interesting, even those exclusive rights vary depending on what kind of work is at issue, and even when the work was made.
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