Copyright owners are granted six basic rights to their works. As a reminder, these are:
To reproduce the copyrighted work
To prepare derivative works
To distribute copies of the work
To perform the work publicly
To display the work publicly
To perform the work publicly by digital transmission
If you are the copyright holder, you have the ability to grant individual permissions for others to perform one of these actions. For more information, see the box Giving Permissions box below.
If you are not the copyright holder, you can ask permissions from copyright holders to perform these actions, using the resources in the Getting Permissions box to identify copyright holders, and sometimes through contacting the Publishers and Producers listed below. There are also exceptions to having to ask for permission in certain situations, the most common being those outlined by the Fair Use doctrine.
Finally, licensing and end-user license agreements often stipulate how a copyright work can and cannot be used, and should always be consulted before repurposing a copyrighted electronic work.