The right to prevent copying. It is a negative right that can be exercised by a copyright holder both by means of civil proceedings and also by seeking a criminal prosecution. Copyright protects the form in which an idea is expressed but not the idea itself. It is the main legal protection for computer-based inventions. Under the WTO agreement all nations agreed to protect computer programs as literary works. Copyright law is now also used to limit the use that can be made of all digitally recorded information (programs, data, databases, etc.) to stop rental of works or use of works by multiple users without the payment of higher royalties.

There is currently a very active movement to harmonize all the national copyright laws so that a Global Information Infrastructure can be created. This process involves a union of the continental European authors’ rights systems based upon The Rights of Man with the Anglo-Saxon copyright system found in the USA, UK, Ireland, and the Commonwealth. The net result of this union is increasing power to authors of copyright works who are requiring payment for rental use of their works from publishers who publish on a pay-per-view basis on the Internet.

No formalities are required to obtain copyright protection for any literary work (including computer programs) although it remains good practice to place a copyright notice in all original works.