Copyright is made up of two words, copy and right.
Copy here means literally what it means, to replicate something.
Right, in this context, means the power to do something, as in someone has a right to plant trees on their land and not on someone else’s land.
When you put both words together, the meaning is obvious. A copyright means the right to copy. But what can be copied? Intellectual property.
An intellectual property is simply something that has been created by someone’s intellect (brain). This ranges from music to stories to characters to patents and much more. For example, only the creator of a character, owns the copyright to that character. Meaning only he can:
Copy that character from one medium to another
Copy the character multiple times to make a profit (like an NFT collection)
Give/sell the copyright to someone else
As you can see in the third point, creators are not always the owners of copyright to works they created. One standard practice is that when an artist creates while under an employment or freelancing contract, he/she doesn’t own the copyright to anything they create. For example, Stan Lee may be the creator of many Marvel superheroes but that doesn’t mean he owns the copyright to them. That probably belongs to Disney or Marvel, the company.
How copyright leads to plagiarism
The natural consequence of having copyright is that these rights must be respected. Should they ever be violated, plagiarism has occurred. How can copyright be violated?
All copyright violations occur through unapproved use. As in, when someone uses the work of an artist (or copyright holder) commercially without first getting approval from the copyright holder. This is seen as intellectual/creative theft. No one likes to be stolen from and so it only makes sense that it is heavily frowned upon everywhere.
To reiterate, you plagiarize by using someone else’s creative labor without their permission.
