The copyright law, Title 17 of the United States Code, includes all amendments enacted through the end of the second session of the 106th Congress in 2000. It includes the Copyright Act of 1976 and all subsequent amendments to copyright law; the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, as amended; and the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act, as amended. The Copyright Office is responsible for registering claims under all three acts. A copyright is a set of restricted, legal rights authors have over their works. Though copyright is most commonly applied to printed items like books and periodicals, it also includes music, videos, artwork, architectural works, software, databases, choreographic dances, pantomimes, images, graphics, and even sounds. Not only does copyright protect the use (copying) of these items, it also includes using parts of the work, distributing the work or performing the work as in a play. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. The authors’ rights begin when a work is created, and works published since March 1, 1989, do not have to bear a copyright notice to be protected under the federal law. When an employee is creating a work as a job duty or on a commission, the employer, not the employee, is considered the author of the work. Examples of such situations could be a teacher creating a test, a graphic designer creating a company logo, a sound-effects recorder contributing to a motion picture, or a translator converting a text into English. The copyright law does allow for a limited amount of an author’s work to be copied or distributed without the author’s permission; this is called fair use. The provisions outlined for fair use include the purpose of the use (mainly for educational purposes), i.e., students photocopying an article for a research paper or a teacher using a book, article, or artwork in the classroom; the nature of a work, i.e., a copy of a photo in a magazine or a clip of music from a CD selection; and using small “extracts” of a work that would not affect the value of a work. The idea of fair use is to copy or use a small portion of a work and not supplement or diminish its MARKET VALUE. Fair use does not allow for the user to distribute the work to the public, sale or lease the work, or profit from the work. When using copyrighted material for personal or educational purposes, it is advised to make a reference to the authors of the materials, whether print, electronic, images, graphics, or sounds. If the material is used for a commercial venture, the author’s permission should be obtained. Some works that are not copyrighted include titles, names, slogans, familiar symbols, colloquialisms, colors, lettering, lists of ingredients, concepts, methods, and principles. Works that exclusively provide information, such as calendars, tape measures, rulers, height and weight charts and similar charts and tables, are not copyrighted.