From the history of copyright: what is plagiarism?

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It is considered that the origin of the word plagiarism came to us from the romans. In the I century BC, a certain Fidentsy gave out the verses of the famous for that moment poet Martial for his own. When he learned this, Martial was enraged and openly declared: "To publish someone else's verse is like stealing someone else's slave."

And in those days, as it was known, the law of Fabia acted, which read: "Anyone who hid or steal another's slave" committed an unforgivable deed, which was called plagio - kidnapping. Such a criminal was called plagiarus - a thief, and in addition to pecuniary punishment they were attracted to hard labor or scourging. From here, we are supposed to have something that we call plagiarism today. 

Strangely enough, but for example, even such great minds as Homer, Virgil, Sophocles - did not hesitate to "borrow" something from their predecessors with impunity. However, the use of other people's works for their own purposes, hardly was pleasant to the original authors.

Alien to take is not good ...

However, from time immemorial, more damage from plagiarism was inflicted on inventors rather than lovers of literature and creative activity. After all, the "borrowing" of foreign technologies inflicted not only a blow to self-esteem, but also struck a penny ... And in order to get rid of this problem clever people came up with a brilliant invention - a patent that among other things is used to this day.

But at that time the word patent was perceived no more than words on paper, therefore to stop stealing of another's ideas and it was not possible: 

• First, for the reason that people were not afraid to "take" someone else's idea and make money on it, because for example the issued patent in Paris was not valid in London and vice versa.
• Secondly, for the reason that the glory of inventions did not spread over long distances. 

"What are you afraid of if there is no one to catch your hand?"

This continued until approximately the middle of the twentieth century, until copyright and patent were legalized and recognized internationally. Although today, many in particular spit on the law and copyright. But if today someone steals other people's ideas and projects, then he tries to do them not like the original. Because of which incidentally very often flare up serious scandals. 

What is Copyright and what is Copyleft 

Now I am working on this text, and as soon as I finish it, my text will be considered copyright and will also be protected by copyright. And since this text was really written by me, and it was not published anywhere and no one before, this work will be considered my intellectual property. From the legal point of view, everything is the same, so I do not need anything to get copyright for my own material. 

On the one hand it is very convenient, because In the future, if someone wants to use my text for their own purposes, he will first have to obtain my permission. But copyright, unlike a patent, can not fully protect my idea. For example, if a user as well as I write my own text on the topic "what is plagiarism", I can not do anything anymore, because copyright protects only my idea and my point of view, but the idea of writing texts on this topic by copyright is not protected. 

At first glance, it seems to you that everything looks pretty cool and very fair, but it only seems so. Time can not be stopped, and over the years it will be more and more difficult to create your own creations that will not have anything in common with the other. 

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However, authors of copyright laws have foreseen this, and decided to limit the time of copyright protection to 14 years. But from the point of view of the law, copyright is retained for 50 years after the death of the author, or 50 years after publication. 

But many began to resent, and consider that this is unfair, because any author can pay back his own project costs in a much shorter time. As a result of long disputes and contradictions on this topic, creative minds and personalities still managed to find a way out of this situation - a movement called copyleft was created.

The main task of combining copyleft is to give access to information to any person in need of it, explaining this by the fact that a prolonged ban on the use and editing of information can greatly harm humanity. And the name copyleft came from programmers, this word denoted a piece of program code, which anyone could use.