People do not realize it, but any electronic information especially from the world wide web contains copyright. The holders of the copyright usually lies with the author and/or the institution, but when authors publish their works through a reputable publisher they usually transfer copyright to that specific publisher.
If you have spend your life and life earnings to study or do research in a specific field of study and then decide to be so kind as to share this knowledge with other people by publishing a report, a study, an article or a book, one should believe that you will deserve the right to be called an expert but more so to earn the respect from users of your work and acknowledge the investment in time, effort and money by keeping to the licensing conditions and copyright laws. People who copy these works and make it freely available or sell the work without the proper permission or use it for their own benefit, do so illegally and therefore promote unlawful activities and therefore is punishable by law.
Copyright, therefore protect the intellectual property of an individual, a group or an institution by prohibiting people to use other people's intellectual insight to benefit themselves. Using other people's intellectual property is protected by the Copyright Act, but also through the license agreements we acknowledge when websites are used and license agreements signed, even if it is just through the click of a button.
The Copyright Act and the License Agreements determine what we can and cannot do with the information accessed and therefore might be as simple as, but not limited to: rights concerning copying, printing, downloading, citing and even the use of information for commercial purposes.
The Internet has made it very easy for individuals and small groups to publish their own works and to maintain the copyright. People write and publish their works on their websites, either free of charge or at a cost. The cost for self-publishing could be very cheap, but marketing, selling, maintaining your website and post publish copyright issues are therefore done at your own cost. Copyright infringements of your work might not be as easy to manage yourself, especially in a digital age where people's ignorance could cause more damage than meets the eye.
Most people publish their intellectual works, especially academics through the use of publishers. Although the process could be expensive, not having the burden of other things like marketing, profits, risks, layouts, formats and especially copyright issues can be burdensome. Copyright will therefore be transferred to the publisher, although the author might receive a financial benefit in the form of royalties for every book sold. Publishing houses are the custodians of reputable scientific outcomes and therefore have the daunting task to ensure credibility in what they publish.
Many authors who publishes their own work, end up publishing it under the Open Access umbrella. By self publishing it means that you will bare all the costs of the publication, but when a reputable publisher is used, the author will carry the costs for the rest of the world to have access to your work. Open Access does not mean that the work is copyright free and many authors either still sign copyright over to the publisher, although others sign an international standardized copyright agreement, such as the Creative Commons License where copyright could be maintained under the author or institutional umbrella. In many instances authors who want to publish their works as open access, but would like to maintain copyright should ask for a Creative Commons License.
If you should copy somebody else's intellectual work and not cite that work properly, you will be plagiarizing the work and a court of law might find you guilty and either summons you with a fine or jailtime.
If we do a search on the Internet for a work, we want to access and there are links to the full text, but also links to the site where we can acquire these works, it is usually a sign that the legal access to the copied works are not reputable and that we need to abstain from using the free versions.
There are a number of publishers who does not follow the rules for reputable publishing and do not care to publish works that are not scientifically correct, or bother anything concerning ethical issues. Some individuals sign copyright to these publishers and there works end up as different authors and even has to bare all the legal costs. Authors must be careful how and to who the sign there intellectual property to.
We, as librarians, academics and publishers are all custodians of copyright. We all have the responsibility to protect our own and each others works, in order to keep the scientific process as reputable as possible.