# copyright (legal)

a governance policy that a person can use to control who may use a piece of information

- Computed level: L10 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: review  ·  Domain: intellectual property  ·  Arena: copyright

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [information](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-information.knowledge), [policy](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-policy.governance), [control](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-control.ability), [governance](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-governance.administrative), [people](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-people.social), [piece](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-piece.portion), [use](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-use.application)

**Through:** a person applies control through an administrative governance system to regulate access to a portion of knowledge, enabling selective application by others under defined rules

**Novel properties:**
- exclusive usage rights
- enforceable ownership claim
- regulated access to knowledge

## Examples
- Disney lobbied for the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act to protect Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. *(institutions)*
- The GPL-3.0 license allows software developers to share code while enforcing attribution and reuse conditions. *(computing)*
- J.K. Rowling receives royalties from every copy of Harry Potter sold, under UK and international copyright law. *(economics)*

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-copyright.legal*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-copyright.legal.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*