Copyright is the federal regime that protects original works of authorship the instant they are fixed in a tangible medium, and this UpLaw overview maps the entire system for creators, businesses, litigators, and courts. It explains the constitutional bargain behind Title 17, the originality floor set by Feist, the idea-expression wall of Baker v. Selden, and the divisible bundle of six exclusive rights in Section 106, including the moral rights VARA adds for visual art. It walks through who owns a work, the work-made-for-hire trap, how long protection lasts, how rights are transferred and clawed back through the inalienable Section 203 termination right, and how fair use actually operates after Google v. Oracle and Warhol v. Goldsmith reshaped it. It then covers registration and the Fourth Estate rule, proof of infringement and the remedies arsenal, the DMCA's safe harbors and anti-circumvention regime, and the treaty framework that makes protection global. Invented hypotheticals ground each doctrine, and inline cross-references route you to deeper UpLaw treatments of registration, the DMCA, work-for-hire, and generative-AI litigation.