Critical Thinking, Ethics, and Civic Responsibility

       Copyrights exist in order to protect authors of documentation or software from unauthorized copying or selling of their work (GNU.) A copyleft will provide a method for software or documentation to be modified or distributed. With a copyleft an author can give users the rights of using and distributing their work keeping it free for everyone to use no matter how it has been modified. The goal of copyleft is to keep author's work free from comercial use. Richard Stallman created the GNU General Public License which was the first copyleft license to be extensively used.

       Copyrights give the creator of original work the right to protect themselves from unauthorized use by others. A copyright holder has the right to be credited for their work, determine who may modify their work, sell their work, or who may finically benefit from their work. A copyright lasts 50 years after the death of the owner, or 75 years after it was published if owned by a company (CU.) 

       A copyleft is the complete opposite of a copyright. The point of a copyleft is to allow an author to distribute their work for free allowing users to modify and distribute it. Every modified or distributed copy retains the original copyleft license with it. A copyleft license is basically a copyright license where the author surrenders some, but not all his rights under the copyright laws.

       In my opinion if there were only copylefts then a lot of authors would lose credit and money for their work. If someone's job is to create software for a company then they would make no money from that job. On the other hand if there weren't copylefts then people wouldn't be able to distribute their work for free, allowing others to modify it, and keep the credit for their work.

Sources:

Persad, Tabatha. "Libre Documentation Explained." GNU Operating System. N.p., 13 Mar. 2002. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.

"Quick Summary of Copyright Issues." Quick Summary of Copyright Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012.