Copyright

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What is Copyright?

Copyright is a right automatically given to you for ownership of your own work, this right gives you the freedom to produce copies of your work, make developments of your work, to display your work in the public and to perform your work. 

Copyright also protects you against plagiarism from your work, it disallows other people to redistribute or copy your work as well as use it publicly unless you give them your permission to do so otherwise they cannot use your work. Copyright in the UK lasts from 70 years from death of the creator, it is like this in most European countries, in Russia it's 25 years after death. 

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stopping-internet-plagiarism/your-copyrights-online/1-what-is-a-copyright/

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Work in the Public Domain is unprotected from copyright work that can be used by anyone, there are three main reasons behind it not being protected and they are:
- The work is work from the Government
- The copyright has expired on the work
- The creator has failed to achieve satisfactory copyright guidelines for the work
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

To achieve satisfactory copyright guidelines, the work must show a level of skill, labour or judgement and must should be original. 
https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law 

IS COPYRIGHT ENOUGH PROTECTION?

In the past, your work needed the copyright trademark to have a copyright attached to it, this changed though and now every idea is copyrighted by its creator automatically. 

If someone uses your work improperly then they can be lawfully persecuted for it which is generally what puts most people off violating your copyright. 

However there are some people who don't know enough about copyright and can use your work without even realise what they're doing is wrong, usually a cease and desist letter scares them into stopping though so it's not necessary that you sue someone and spend a lot of money on stopping it when a simple letter can stop it. 

http://www.plagiarism.org/ask-the-experts/faq/