About Copyright Information and how we work

Copyright Information is a plain-language reference about copyright for people who make, share and publish things online, and for the parents, students and teachers around them. We answer one question per page, show the official source behind the answer, and say clearly where the law is unsettled. Nothing on the site is for sale, and nothing here is legal advice.

01Who writes this site

Pages are written and reviewed by the Copyright Information editors, and every page carries that byline. We are not a law firm, we do not represent anyone, and we do not offer consultations. Our job is to explain what the law and the official sources say, in words a non-lawyer can use.

We write for the reader who has just hit a copyright question in real life: a writer about to self-publish a book drafted with an AI assistant, a parent holding an email from the internet provider, a student told an essay "looks AI-written," a teacher choosing classroom material, or an artist who found their work in an AI dataset.

02This domain's history

From 2011 to 2017 this domain hosted the Center for Copyright Information. This site is not affiliated with the former CCI, its member companies or any internet provider.

The Center for Copyright Information ran the Copyright Alert System, often called six strikes, from February 2013 until the program ended in January 2017. After that, the domain passed through other hands and carried unrelated content. The current site was written from scratch in 2026.

Because many libraries, news articles and universities still link to pages about that program, we keep a neutral archive of the Copyright Alert System. It summarizes in our own words how the program worked, what it reported and why it ended, presents the views of both supporters and critics, and links to original documents where they survive. Archive pages are labelled as summaries written in 2026.

03Our method: how we source and review

Primary sources first. Every article cites the statute, court opinion or US Copyright Office document behind its main points, usually two to four per page, linked in the text.
Dates in the sentence. Legal statements name their source and date, such as a guidance document's publication date or the day a court ruled, so readers can judge how current they are.
One number per fact. When a figure or date appears on more than one page, it is the same everywhere.
Visible review dates. Each page shows the date it was last reviewed. That date changes only when the content changes.
Quarterly AI reviews. Pages about AI and copyright are reviewed at least every three months, because court decisions and agency guidance in that area are still arriving.
Unsettled means unsettled. Where courts disagree or a question is pending, we say so rather than guess.
No paid placement. We do not accept payment to mention or link to anything.

04Not legal advice

Everything on Copyright Information is general information about US copyright law. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create a lawyer and client relationship with anyone. Laws differ between countries and change over time, and the right answer often depends on facts we cannot see.

When the stakes are real, such as a lawsuit, a settlement demand, a contract or a business decision, talk to a lawyer licensed where you live. Many law schools and arts organizations run free or low-cost clinics. Our terms of use set out this notice in full.

05Corrections

We want every page to be right. If you find a factual error, an outdated date or a broken source link, please tell us through our contact page. Include the page address and, if you can, a link to the source that shows the correct information.

We check every correction request against the primary source. When we change a page because of an error, we update its review date. We cannot answer questions about individual legal situations, but we read every message about the accuracy of our pages.