Copyright is an important legal issue within the media; if you don't follow the law closely enough you're setting yourself up for a loss of cash.
Let's first look at general copyright issues, before later applying them to Journalism. Copyright in music has been hitting the headlines a lot in recent years; illegal downloads are rising and different musicians are realising their ownership of their own material is coming to the end, so are fighting tooth and nail to keep it. Generally speaking, anything original that you create belongs to you, but in the music world this only lasts for 50 years. When it comes to purchasing music the general assumption is that if you buy it, you own, although this is not the case. What you buy is the license to play the music in certain settings. If you wanted to broadcast it you would need a further license and would probably owe the musician royalties. Another way to look at this is to watch a DVD and take note of the copyright notices at the start of the disc. Now imagine someone shouting this at you whilst you play an album. Some music, though, is free of any copyright so you may just have to credit the musician to gain the rights to it.
Applying this to Journalism, you can sell the license to your work in the same way, except in this instance the consumer is replaced by the media organisation; this would be an example of free-lancing. However, you can also sell ALL of your rights and be bought out by an organisation. This will mean that you lose all rights to any further profit from your own work, even if it's sold on and the company make a fortune from you. It's your hard luck. Likewise, if you work for a media organisation, any work you do becomes their property so they can distribute it however they like. You can't stop them.
'Fair Dealing' is a way past copyright. This enables you to use copyrighted material if you acknowledge the author of the work. This includes 'lifting' stories from newspapers: you can keep the facts, but you should not copy them word for word and use any of their pictures. You can, however, use this work for comment or criticism. If I was reviewing a film I would be allowed to show a clip of the film if I talk over it and credit the owners, so not to pass it off as my own work.
The Creative Commons is a law that was passed so people are able to use copyright free material without paying royalties, but you must comply to the author's conditions - they may say that you can't manipulate the image or that they'd like to be credited.
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