Attribution, in copyright law, is acknowledgment as

credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt) ...

to the copyright holder or author of a work. If a work is under copyright, there is a long tradition of the author requiring attribution while directly quoting portions of work created by that author. An author may formally require attribution required via a

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

, legally preventing others from claiming to have written the work and allowing a copyright holder to retain reputational benefits from having written it. In cases when the copyright holder is the author themselves, this behavior is often moralized as a sign of decency and respect to acknowledge the creator by giving them credit for the work. This said, a work in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

, which is any not covered by copyright, has no such attribution requirement in most parts of the world. This is the distinguishing factor between

plagiarism Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...

, which is not a crime, but an unethical act, and

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

, which may be a cause of legal action from the author.

Copyright holder attribution

ear An ear is the organ that enables hearing and, in mammals, body balance using the vestibular system. In mammals, the ear is usually described as having three parts—the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear consists of ...

opyright holder’s name'. The preservation of such a notice was an invariable requirement to prevent a work entering the public domain; this changed in the United States on March 1, 1989 when the requirement of copyright registration and copyright signment was ended. Copyright holder attribution is in most countries in the world not required, due to

Berne convention The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal to agree on a set of leg ...

Copyright holder attribution

See also

References