What rights do creators and copyright holders have?
Under the Copyright Act, the copyright holder has the sole right to reproduce the work or any substantial part of it in any form, to perform the work or any substantial part of it in public, and, if it is unpublished, to publish the work or any substantial part of it. Depending upon the nature of the work, the copyright owner might also enjoy a number of additional rights enumerated in the Act. These broader rights include the right to produce, perform or publish translations of the work, to adapt the work into other mediums, and to publicly present or perform the work. The copyright holder also has the right to authorize any of the above actions. Any of these rights, collectively known as economic rights, can be assigned to another party. For instance, the author of a work can give the publisher of the work the right to enforce these rights. The Copyright Act also bestows upon the author a series of personal rights called moral rights that cannot be assigned.
