Copyleft

by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome (Editor), John McBrewster (Editor)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions. Copyleft is a form of licensing and can be used to modify copyrights for works such as computer software, documents, music and art. In general, copyright law allows an author to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of the author's work. In contrast, an author may, through a copyleft licensing scheme, give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute the work as long as any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same copyleft licensing scheme. A widely used and originating copyleft license is the GNU General Public License. Creative Commons provides a similar license called ShareAlike. Copyleft can also be characterized as a copyright licensing scheme in which an author surrenders some but not all rights under copyright law.

154 pages, Paperback

First published December 11, 2009

About the author

This is the 'editor' of many books based upon Wikipedia articles.