
Attribution, in copyright law, is acknowledgment as credit 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, 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, 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, which is not a crime, but an unethical act, and copyright infringement, which may be a cause of legal action from the author.
Copyright holder attribution
In most countries of the world, copyright holder attribution is not required in the original source material, due to the
Berne Convention. The most fundamental form of attribution is the statement of the copyright holder's identity, often in the form ''Copyright ©
ear opyright holder's name'. In the United States, the preservation of such a notice was formerly an invariable requirement to prevent a work entering the public domain. This changed on March 1, 1989, when the requirement of copyright registration and copyright signment was ended by the
Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988.
See also
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Acknowledgment (creative arts)
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Creative Commons license
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bu ...
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Credit (creative arts)
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) ...
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Byline
The byline (or by-line in British English) on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name of the writer of the article. Bylines are commonly placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines (notably '' Reader's ...
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Signature block
A signature block (often abbreviated as signature, sig block, sig file, .sig, dot sig, siggy, or just sig) is a personalized block of text automatically appended at the bottom of an email message, Usenet article, or Internet forum, forum post.
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References
Copyright law
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