SPU Library Copyright Guide

Most educators are familiar with the issue of plagiarism – the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own. That’s because they teach attribution and citation as part of the research process and because teachers have experience observing these guidelines in their own academic work. Both the concepts of attribution (and plagiarism) and copyright (and copyright infringement) are meant to protect the rights of the person who authored or created a prior work, but they do this in different ways:

• Attribution is meant to give proper acknowledgment to the creator and help the reader/viewer distinguish between what parts of a work are original and which are quoted or adapted from someone else’s work. Often attribution is in the form of a bibliography or works cited. They are also included to guarantee academic integrity.
• Copyright is meant to give the creator a degree of control over their original work and how it is disseminated. In some cases, this means they may choose to require compensation or payment in order for others to use or view it.

The fundamental purpose of copyright protection is to provide incentives to writers, artists, and other creators to continue creating new pieces. Acknowledgment alone wouldn’t likely be enough incentive, so copyright often requires permission. That means that, unless usage is permitted under fair use, someone could provide proper attribution for a copyrighted creation, but still be infringing on the copyright if that person did not have the permission of the creator to use and publish the copyrighted work.