The Great Britain road numbering scheme is a numbering system used to classify and identify all major roads in Great Britain.
Each road is given a single letter, which represents the road's category, and a subsequent number, with a length of between 1 and 4 digits. Similar systems are used in Northern Ireland (see Roads in Ireland), the Isle of Man (see Roads in the Isle of Man) and Jersey, Channel Islands. All of these numbering schemes use identical basic conventions and road-sign designs.

Important radial roads in England and Wales
Similarly, in Scotland, important roads radiating from Edinburgh have single digit numbers, thus:
While the road numbering system in Scotland centres on Edinburgh, arguably the true "hub" for its road network itself is Broxden Junction in Perth.

A7 Edinburgh to Carlisle
A8 Edinburgh to Greenock
A9 Falkirk to Thurso (Originally Edinburgh to Inverness, it was extended to John o' Groats in the 1930s, and later cut back at the southern end because of the construction of the main runway at Edinburgh Airport on top of it. More recently, it was diverted to Thurso at the northern end.) Important radial roads in Scotland
In England and Wales the road numbering system for all-purpose (i.e. non-motorway) roads is based on a radial pattern centred on London. In Scotland the same scheme is centred on Edinburgh. In both cases the main single-digit roads (largely) define the zone boundaries, with the exception of the Zones 1 and 2.
Zone 1: North of the Thames, east of the A1 Zone 2: South of the Thames, east of the A3 Zone 3: North/West of the A3, south of the A4 Zone 4: North of the A4, south/west of the A5 Zone 5: North/East of the A5, west of the A6, south of the Solway Firth/Eden Estuary Zone 6: East of the A6 and A7, west of the A1 Zone 7: North of the Solway Firth/Eden Estuary, west of the A7, south of the A8 Zone 8: North of the A8, west of the A9 Zone 9: North of the A8, east of the A9 Motorways in England and Wales use a similar zoning system, based on the single-digit motorways. Motorways in Scotland are numbered differently.
The first digit in the number of any road should be the number of the furthest-anticlockwise zone entered by that road. For example, the A38 road, a trunk road running from Bodmin to Mansfield starts in Zone 3, and is therefore numbered with a A3x number, even though it passes through Zones 4 and 5 to end in Zone 6. Additionally, the A1 in Newcastle upon Tyne has moved twice. Originally along the Great North Road, it then moved to the Tyne Tunnel, causing some of the roads in Zone 1 to now be in Zone 6, and some were renumbered. It was later moved to the western bypass around the city, and roads between the two found themselves back in Zone 1, and were renumbered wholesale. This did not always happen, however, and when single-digit roads were bypassed, roads were often re-numbered in keeping with the original zone boundaries.
To view a list of roads where this does not apply, see Anomalously numbered roads in Great Britain.

Zoning system
These radials are supplemented by two-digit codes which are routes that are slightly less important (but may still be classified as trunk routes), although many of these routes have lost a lot of their significance due to motorway bypasses, or the upgrading of other A-roads. These routes are not all centred on London, but as far as possible follow the general principle that their number locates them radially clockwise from the associated single digit route. For example, the A10 (London to King's Lynn) is the first main route clockwise from the A1, the A11 is the next, and so on:
Note on numbering: These roads have been numbered either outwards from or clockwise around their respective hubs, depending on their alignment.

A10 London to King's Lynn (known as the Great Cambridge Road or the Old North Road)
A11 London to Norwich
A12 London to Great Yarmouth
A13 London to Shoeburyness
A14 M1/M6 Catthorpe junction near Rugby to Felixstowe (Originally Royston to Huntingdon)
A15 Peterborough to Hull
A16 Stamford to Grimsby
A17 Newark to King's Lynn
A18 Doncaster to Ludborough
A19 Doncaster to Seaton Burn
A20 London to Dover
A21 London to Hastings
A22 London to Eastbourne
A23 London to Brighton
A24 London to Worthing
A25 Wrotham Heath to Guildford
A26 Maidstone to Newhaven
A27 Pevensey to Whiteparish
A28 Margate to Hastings
A29 Beare Green to Bognor Regis
A30 London to Land's End
A31 Guildford to Bere Regis
A32 Alton to Gosport
A33 Southampton to Reading
A34 Winchester to Salford
A35 Southampton to Honiton
A36 Southampton to Bath
A37 Dorchester to Bristol
A38 Bodmin to Mansfield
A39 Bath to Falmouth
A40 London to Fishguard
A41 London to Birkenhead
A42 Appleby Magna (M42) to Kegworth(M1) (Originally Reading to Birmingham: taken over by A34)
A43 Cherwell Valley to Stamford (formerly Oxford to Market Deeping)
A44 Oxford to Aberystwyth
A45 Birmingham to Thrapston (Originally to Felixstowe, but eastern section taken over by A14)
A46 Bath to Cleethorpes
A47 Birmingham to Great Yarmouth
A48 Highnam to Carmarthen
A49 Ross-on-Wye to Bamber Bridge near Preston
A50 Leicester to M1 Junction 22 and Kegworth (M1 Junction 24) to Warrington (formerly Northampton to Warrington)
A51 Kingsbury to Chester
A52 Newcastle-under-Lyme to Mablethorpe
A53 Shrewsbury to Buxton
A54 Chester to Buxton
A55 Holyhead to Chester (The North Wales Expressway)
A56 Chester to Broughton (A59)
A57 Liverpool to Lincoln
A58 Prescot to Wetherby
A59 Liverpool to York
A60 Loughborough to Doncaster
A61 Derby to Thirsk
A62 Manchester to Leeds
A63 Leeds to Hull
A64 Leeds to Scarborough
A65 Leeds to Kendal
A66 Workington to Grangetown
A67 Bowes (A66) to Crathorne (A19)
A68 Darlington to Edinburgh
A69 Carlisle to Blaydon
A70 Edinburgh to Ayr
A71 Edinburgh to Irvine
A72 Galashiels to Hamilton
A73 Abington to Cumbernauld
A74 Carlisle to Glasgow
A75 Gretna to Stranraer
A76 Dumfries to Kilmarnock
A77 Glasgow to Portpatrick
A78 Prestwick to Greenock
A79 Prestwick to Doonholm
A80 Glasgow to Bonnybridge
A81 Glasgow to Callander
A82 Glasgow to Inverness
A83 Campbeltown to Tarbet
A84 Stirling to Lochearnhead
A85 Oban to Dundee
A86 Spean Bridge to Kingussie
A87 Invergarry to Uig
A88 Larbert to Stenhousemuir (Originally what is now the A9 past Inverness: this explains the rarity of A9xxx numbers in the Highlands)
A89 Newbridge to Glasgow
A90 Edinburgh to Fraserburgh
A91 Bannockburn to St Andrews
A92 Dunfermline to Stonehaven
A93 Perth to Aberdeen
A94 Perth to Forfar
A95 Aviemore to Meld
A96 Inverness to Aberdeen
A97 Dinnet to Banff
A98 Fochabers to Fraserburgh
A99 Latheron to John o' Groats Two-digit "A" roads
The system continues to three and four digit numbers which further split and criss-cross the radials. Lower numbers originate closer to London than higher numbered ones. Most roads built or reclassified since road numbers were introduced in 1919 have four-digit numbers. Knowing the number of the road you are on will give you a rough idea of where you are geographically once the system is understood. Below is a rough guide to the numbering series which apply to the various areas of the Great British mainland:
Some of the most important 3-digit "A" roads are:
A small number of 4-digit A roads have grown in importance since the numbers were allocated:

10 and 100 series numbers: Greater London, Essex, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, Lincolnshire, parts of Yorkshire, Cleveland, Tyne and Wear, Northumbria, and on up to Edinburgh.
20 and 200-series numbers: Surrey, Sussex and Kent
30 and 300-series numbers: Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset and South West England
40 and 400-series numbers: Central England and south and Mid Wales
50 and 500-series numbers: North Wales, North Midlands, Cheshire, Cumbria and Lancashire
60 and 600-series numbers: North-East England, Yorkshire and South East Scotland
70 and 700-series numbers: South West and Central Scotland
80 and 800-series numbers: North West Scotland and the Western Isles
90 and 900-series numbers: North East Scotland, Orkney and Shetland
A127 Romford to Southend-on-Sea (the Southend Arterial Road or New Southend Road)
A205 Woolwich to Chiswick (South Circular Road)
A259 Folkestone to Havant. Forms part of the South Coast Trunk Road between the A2070 and A27.
A272 Poundford to A30 near Andover
A303 Basingstoke to Honiton (relieves traffic from the A30)
A361 Ilfracombe to Rugby (the longest 3-digit road)
A403 Avonmouth to Aust
A406 Chiswick to Beckton (North Circular Road)
A414 Hemel Hempstead to Maldon
A465 Bromyard to Neath (Head of the Valleys Road)
A470 Cardiff to Llandudno
A483 Swansea to Chester
A487 Haverfordwest to Bangor
A580 Liverpool to Manchester (East Lancs Road)
A538 Altrincham to Wilmslow (Hale Road becoming Wilmslow Road)
A689 Carlisle to Hartlepool
A720 Edinburgh City Bypass
A1079 Hull to York
A2070 Ashford to Romney Marsh in Kent. Now part of the South Coast Trunk Road. Other "A" roads
Some sections of "A" roads have been improved to the same standard as motorways, but do not completely replace the existing road; they form a higher standard part of the A-road route. These sections retain the "A" road designation, but are suffixed (M). Examples include:
There have been occasions where this designation has been used to indicate motorway bypasses of an existing road, but the original retains the A road designation. Examples include:

A1(M)
A404(M)
A3(M)
A308(M)
A329(M)
A48(M) Motorway sections of "A" roads
"B" roads are numbered local routes, which have lower traffic densities than the main trunk roads, or A road. They are typically short, not usually more than 15 miles. The classification has nothing to do with the width or quality of the physical road, and B roads can range from dual carriageways to single track roads with passing places. B roads follow the same numbering scheme as A roads, but almost always have 3- and 4-digit designations. Many 3-digit B roads outside the London area are former A roads which have been downgraded owing to new road construction; others may link smaller settlements to A roads.

"B" roads
Roads and lanes with yet lower traffic densities are designated "C", "D" and "U" (Unclassified) roads, but while these are numbered, in general this is done purely for the benefit of the local authorities who are responsible for maintaining them, and the numbering is arbitrary and does not, or should not, appear on any public signage. Some exceptions to this are known, however. [1] These other classified roads, however, are taken into account when planning officers deal with certain planning applications.

"C", "D" and "U" roads
Main article: List of motorways in the United Kingdom
The first motorway in Britain was the Preston Bypass, opened in December 1958. This is now a section of M6, plus the M55 to junction 1. The M1, M10 and M45 opened together in 1959.
Motorways first came to Britain over three decades after the advent of the A-road numbering event, and as a result required a new numbering system. They were given an M prefix, and (in England and Wales) a numbering system of their own not conterminous with that of the A-road network, though based on the same principle of zones.
The most important single-digit motorways were numbered to (loosely) match the existing main roads which the motorway follows or was intended to relieve traffic from. The level of correlation differs; the M4 motorway stays very true to the line of the A4 road throughout England, whereas the M1 motorway meanders a path not too close to the A1 road, although generally north-south like its predecessor.
A very obvious exception to this rule is the M5, which closely follows the A38. It was numbered uniquely as it was already known that the A5 road needed no such motorway bypass as this was already the job of the M1/M6.
The single-digit motorways mark out zones or cones, the concept analogous with that of the A-road network. However, due to the difference in position of the A5 vs. the M5, the actual position of these zones varies greatly, especially in the Midlands and South West England.
Shorter motorways typically take their numbers from a parent motorway in violation of the zone system, explaining the apparently anomalous numbers of the M48 and M49 motorways as spurs of the M4, and M271 and M275 motorways as those of the M27. The latter two might be explained by the original plan for the M3 motorway, which was due to head towards Exeter, rather than Southampton as it does now. The original committee which set up the motorway zones chose the boundary of zones 2 and 3 to be the projected line of the M3 towards Exeter, although it's not currently known whether this is still the case.
This numbering system was devised in 1958-9 by the then Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, and applied only in England and Wales. In Scotland, where roads were the responsibility of the Scottish Office, the decision was taken to adopt the numbering originally proposed, in that motorways took the numbers of the all-purpose routes they replaced. As a result, there is no M7 (as no motorway follows the A7), and when the A90 was re-routed to replace the A85 south of Perth, the short M85 became part of the M90.

Motorways
Fictional numbers are assigned for use on TV and film; such a number that is involved with a serious fictional accident is blacklisted for five years from actual use.

Ancient roads



UK topics

Donald Pleasence, OBE (October 5, 1919 – February 2, 1995) was an English stage and film actor.

Appearances
His acting career began in a 1939 production of Wuthering Heights, but was interrupted by World War II. He was at first a conscientious objector, but later joined the Royal Air Force and was shot down on a bombing raid, taken prisoner and tortured by his captors. He spent two years in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he produced and acted in plays. He would later play Flight Lt. Colin Blythe in The Great Escape where much of the story takes place inside a POW camp.
He returned to acting after the war, and critics began to call him the "Man with the Hypnotic Eye". Perhaps because of this, and his bald head and quiet but intense voice, he specialised in insane and evil characters, including Prince John in the ITV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, Heinrich Himmler in The Eagle Has Landed and the Bond villain Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. In his later years, he became known to a younger generation as Dr. Loomis in Halloween. His trademark voice may be credited to elocution lessons he had as a child.
His acting hero was Sir Laurence Olivier whom he worked with many times, including the 1979 version of Dracula.

Personal life
Pleasence was nominated for the 1972 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Wise Child and was awarded an OBE in 1994. On February 2, 1995 he died in St.-Paul-de-Vence, France from complications from heart valve replacement surgery at the age of 75.

Filmography

One of his earliest roles on television, as Syme in the BBC's highly-acclaimed 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, also starred Peter Cushing - another actor who would go on to find fame in many horror film roles.
He appeared twice with Patrick McGoohan in the British spy series, Danger Man, in episodes "Find and Return" and "Position of Trust."
He hosted the 1981 Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live with music guest Fear.
He starred as Rev. Septimus Harding in the BBC's 1982 production of The Barchester Chronicles
His first appearance in America was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. He played an aging (and suicidal) teacher at a boys' school in the 1962 episode "The Changing of the Guard."
He played the murderer in an episode of Columbo entitled "Any Old Port in a Storm" and also had the distinction of having been a culprit captured by Mrs. Columbo in "Murder is a Parlor Game."
He provided the voiceover for the British Public Information Film, Lonely Water. The film, intended to warn children of the dangers of playing near water, attained notoriety for allegedly giving children nightmares.

Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli (March 27, 1817 - May 11, 1891) was a Swiss botanist. He discovered what would later become known as chromosomes and apparently discouraged Gregor Mendel from further work on genetics.

Academic career
Among his more important contributions to science were a series of papers in the Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Botanik (1844 1846); Die neueren Algensysteme (1847); Gattungen einzelliger Algen (1849); Pflanzenphysiologische Untersuchungen (1855 1858), with Carl Eduard Cramer; Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Botanik (1858-1868); a number of papers contributed to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, forming three volumes of Botanische Mitteilungen (1861-1881); and, finally, his volume, Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre[scanned source], published in 1884. However, perhaps Nägeli is best known nowadays for his unproductive correspondence (1866-1873) with Gregor Mendel concerning the latter's celebrated work on Pisum sativum, the garden pea.
The standard botanical author abbreviation Nägeli is applied to species he described.

County Down, (Contae An Dúin in Irish) is one of the six counties that form Northern Ireland, covering an area of 2,448 km² (945 square miles). It lies in the province of Ulster. The estimated population in 1992 was 416,600, a more recent approximation puts it at about 516,000. The county town is Downpatrick, and the largest town is Bangor.
Down contains both the southernmost point in Northern Ireland (Cranfield Point) and the easternmost point on the island of Ireland (Burr Point).
The county borders County Antrim to the north, the Irish Sea to the east and County Armagh to the west.

Places of interest

White Image - County Down Art Gallery
Bangor FM - County Down Radio Station
County Down website
Armagh and Down Tourism
Culture Northern Ireland - Industrial Heritage of County Down
Down Gaelic Athletic Association/Cummann Lúthchleas Gael Coiste An Dún
Genealogy indexes for County Down

John William Heisman (October 23, 1869 – October 3, 1936) was a prominent American football player and college football coach in the early era of the sport and is the namesake of the Heisman Trophy awarded annually to the season's best college football player.

Later coaching career
He was an innovator and developed one of the first shifts, had both guards pull to lead an end run, and had his center toss the ball back, instead of rolling or kicking it. He was a proponent of the legalization of the forward pass.
Heisman subsequently became the athletics director of the former Downtown Athletic Club in Manhattan, New York, and in 1935 the club began awarding annually in his honor what is now almost universally referred to as the Heisman Trophy, given to the player voted as the season's best collegiate player. Voters for this award consist primarily of media representatives, who are allocated by regions across the country in order to filter out possible regional bias, and former recipients. Following the bankruptcy of the Downtown Athletic Club in 2002, the award is now given out by the Yale Club.

For the Anglo-Saxon monarch, see Eni of East Anglia.
Eni S.p.A. is an Italian multinational oil and gas company, with a presence in 70 countries, currently Italy's largest industrial company, with a market capitalization of € 98 billion euros (US $131 billion) as of February 2007. It was recently privatized, the first 14.7 percent being sold to the public for $4.1 billion in 1995.

Operations

(en) Marcello Boldrini, Mattei, Rome, Colombo, 1969
(it) Marcello Colitti, Energia e sviluppo in Italia, Bari, De Donato, 1979
(en) Paul H. Frankel, Oil and Power Policy, New York - Washington, Praeger, 1966
(it) Nico Perrone, Enrico Mattei, Bologna, Il mulino, 2001 ISBN 8-81507-913-0

For Wikipedia policy about copyright issues, see Wikipedia:Copyrights
Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally "the right to copy" an original creation. In most cases, these rights are of limited duration. The symbol for copyright is ©, and in some jurisdictions may alternatively be written as either (c) or (C).
Copyright may subsist in a wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms or "works". These include poems, theses, plays, and other literary works, movies, choreographic works (dances, ballets, etc.), musical compositions, audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, software, radio and television broadcasts of live and other performances, and, in some jurisdictions, industrial designs. Designs or industrial designs may have separate or overlapping laws applied to them in some jurisdictions. Copyright is one of the laws covered by the umbrella term intellectual property.
Copyright law covers only the form or manner in which ideas or information have been manifested, the "form of material expression". It is not designed or intended to cover the actual idea, concepts, facts, styles, or techniques which may be embodied in or represented by the copyright work. For example, the copyright which subsists in relation to a Mickey Mouse cartoon prohibits unauthorized parties from distributing copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works which copy or mimic Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but does not prohibit the creation of artistic works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they are sufficiently different to not be deemed imitative of the original. In some jurisdictions, copyright law provides scope for satirical or interpretive works which themselves may be copyrighted. Other laws may impose legal restrictions on reproduction or use where copyright does not - such as trademarks and patents.
Copyright laws are standardized through international conventions such as the Berne Convention in some countries and are required by international organizations such as European Union or World Trade Organization from their member states.

Copyright
Patents
Trademarks
Geographical indication
Industrial design rights
Trade secrets
Related rights
Tradenames
Domain names
Database rights
Mask work
Plant breeders' rights
Supplementary protection certificate
Traditional knowledge History
The 1886 Berne Convention first established recognition of copyrights among sovereign nations, rather than merely bilaterally. Under the Berne Convention, copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Berne Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires. The Berne Convention also resulted in foreign authors being treated equivalently to domestic authors, in any country signed onto the Convention.
The UK signed the Berne Convention in 1887 but did not implement large parts of it until 100 years later with the passage of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. The USA did not sign the Berne Convention until 1989.
The regulations of the Berne Convention are incorporated into the World Trade Organization's TRIPS agreement, thus making the Berne Convention practically world-wide.

The Berne Convention
Typically, a work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time (some jurisdictions may allow this to be extended). Different countries impose different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some 'skill, originality and work' which has gone into it. However, even fairly trivial amounts of these qualities are sufficient for determining whether a particular act of copying constitutes an infringement of the author's original expression. In Australia and the United Kingdom it has been held that a single word is insufficient to comprise a copyright work. In the UK, however, single words or a string of words, usually less than eight, can be registered as a "Trade Mark" instead.
In the United States, copyright has been made automatic (in the style of the Berne Convention) since March 1, 1989, which has had the effect of making it appear to be more like a property right. Thus, as with some forms of personal property, a copyright need not be granted or obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape or a letter), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while a copyright need not be officially registered for the copyright owner to begin exercising his exclusive rights, registration of works (where the laws of that jurisdiction provide for registration) does have benefits; it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees (whereas in the USA, for instance, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits). The original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the actual author rather than the author himself if the work is a "work for hire". Again, this principle is widespread; in English law the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that where a work in which copyright subsists is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a "Work for Hire."
Copyrights are generally enforced by the holder in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but are now becoming more commonplace as copyright collectives such as the RIAA are, more and more, targeting the file sharing home Internet user. Thus far, however, most such cases against file sharers have been settled out of court for several thousands dollars. (See: File sharing and the law)

Obtaining and enforcing copyright
Use of a copyright notice — consisting of the letter C inside of a circle (that is, "©"), the abbreviation "Copr.", or the word "Copyright", followed by the year of the first publication of the work and the name of the copyright holder — was part of previous United States statutory requirements. (Note that the letter C inside of parentheses ("(c)") has never been an officially recognized designator.) The proper Copyright notice for audio recordings of musical compositions is a "P" inside a circle which stands for Phonorecord. But in 1989, the U.S. enacted the Berne Convention Implementation Act, amending the 1976 Copyright Act to conform to most of the provisions of the Berne Convention. As a result, the use of copyright notices has become optional to claim copyright, because the Berne Convention makes copyright automatic.[1] However, notice of copyright (using these marks) does have consequences in terms of allowable damages in an infringement lawsuit in some places.
It is important to understand that absence of the copyright symbol does not mean that the work is not covered by copyright. The work once created from originality through 'mental labor' is instantaneously considered copyrighted to that person. Thus, a natural copyright exists from the time a work is invented or created regardless of whether a work has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Since all countries have separate copyright laws, there is no such thing as an International Copyright. The Berne Convention, however, makes the copyright automatic as well. Should Copyright Infringement litigation ensue, registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is highly suggested if one is to prevail in court.
The phrase All rights reserved was once a necessary formal notice that all rights granted under existing copyright law are retained by the copyright holder and that legal action may be taken against copyright infringement. It was provided as a result of the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, which required some statement of reservation of rights to grant international coverage in all the countries that were signatory to that convention. While it is commonplace to see it, this notice is now superfluous, as every country that is a member of the Buenos Aires Convention is also a member of the Berne Convention, which hold a copyright to be valid in all signatory states without any formality of notice.
This phrase is sometimes still used even on some documents to which the original author does not retain all rights granted by copyright law, such as works released under a copyleft license. It is, however, only a habitual formality and is unlikely to have legal consequences.

Copyright notices
Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:
The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise the attendant rights, and others are prohibited using the work without the consent of the copyright holder. Copyright is often called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit people (e.g. readers, viewers, or listeners, and primarily publishers and would be publishers) from doing something, rather than permitting people (e.g. authors) to do something. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law. The rights of the copyright holder also permit him/her to not use or exploit their copyright for its duration. This means an author can choose to exploit their copyright for some of the duration and then not for the rest, vice versa, or entirely one or the other.
There is however a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law, and is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right. Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that defining copyright purely as a negative right is incompatible with the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain.
The right to adapt a work means to transform the way in which the work is expressed. Examples include developing a stage play or film script from a novel; translating a short story; and making a new arrangement of a musical work.

to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (including, typically, electronic copies)
to import or export the work
to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work)
to perform or display the work publicly
to sell or assign these rights to others
to transmit or display by means of digital audio transmission (XM Satellite Radio, Sirius) Exclusive rights

Main article: Limitations and exceptions to copyright Limits and exceptions to copyright

Main article: Idea-expression divide The first-sale doctrine and exhaustion of rights

Main articles: Fair use and Fair dealing Fair use and fair dealing
A copyright, or aspects of it, may be assigned or transferred from one party to another. For example, a musician who records an album will often sign an agreement with a record company in which the musician agrees to transfer all copyright in the recordings in exchange for royalties and other considerations. The creator (and original copyright holder) benefits, or expects to, from production and marketing capabilities far beyond those of the author. In the digital age of music, music may be copied and distributed at minimal cost through the Internet, however the record industry attempts to provide promotion and marketing for the artist and his work so it can reach a much larger audience. A copyright holder need not transfer all rights completely, though many publishers will insist. Some of the rights may be transferred, or else the copyright holder may grant another party a non-exclusive license to copy and/or distribute the work in a particular region or for a specified period of time. A transfer or licence may have to meet particular formal requirements in order to be effective; see section 239 of the Australia Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Under Australian law, it is not enough to pay for a work to be created in order to also own the copyright. The copyright itself must be expressly transferred in writing.
Under the U.S. Copyright Act, a transfer of ownership in copyright must be memorialized in a writing signed by the transferor. For that purpose, ownership in copyright includes exclusive licenses of rights. Thus exclusive licenses, to be effective, must be granted in a written instrument signed by the grantor. No special form of transfer or grant is required. A simple document that identifies the work involved and the rights being granted is sufficient. Non-exclusive grants (often called non-exclusive licenses) need not be in writing under U.S. law. They can be oral or even implied by the behavior of the parties. Transfers of copyright ownership, including exclusive licenses, may and should be recorded in the U.S. Copyright Office. (Information on recording transfers is available on the Office's web site.) While recording is not required to make the grant effective, it offers important benefits, much like those obtained by recording a deed in a real estate transaction.
Copyright may also be licensed. Some jurisdictions may provide that certain classes of copyrighted works be made available under a prescribed statutory license (e.g. musical works in the United States used for radio broadcast or performance). This is also called a compulsory license, because under this scheme, anyone who wishes to copy a covered work does not need the permission of the copyright holder, but instead merely files the proper notice and pays a set fee established by statute (or by an agency decision under statutory guidance) for every copy made. Failure to follow the proper procedures would place the copier at risk of an infringement suit. Because of the difficulty of following every individual work, copyright collectives or collecting societies and performing rights organizations (such as ASCAP, BMI, RIAA and MPAA) have been formed to collect royalties for hundreds (thousands and more) works at once. Though this market solution bypasses the statutory license, the availability of the statutory fee still helps dictate the price per work collective rights organizations charge, driving it down to what avoidance of procedural hassle would justify.

Transfer and licensing
Copyright law covers the creative or artistic expression of an idea. Patent law covers inventions. Trademark law covers distinctive signs which are used in relation to products or services as indicators of origin, as does (in a similar fashion), Trade dress. Registered designs law covers the look or appearance of a manufactured or functional article. Trade secret law covers secret or sensitive knowledge or information.
Although copyright and trademark laws are theoretically distinct, more than one type of them may cover the same item or subject matter. For example, in the case of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, the image and name of Mickey Mouse would be the subject of trademark legislation, while the cartoon itself would be subject to copyright. Titles and character names from books or movies may also be trademarked while the works from which they are drawn may qualify for copyright.
Another point of distinction is that a copyright (and a patent) is generally subject to a statutorily-determined term, whereas a trademark registration may remain in force indefinitely if the trademark is periodically used and renewal fees continue to be duly paid to the relevant jurisdiction's trade marks office or registry. Once the term of a copyright has expired, the formerly copyrighted work enters the public domain and may be freely used or exploited by anyone. Courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright. Public domain works should not be confused with works that are publicly available. Works posted in the internet for example, are publicly available, but are not generally in the public domain. Copying such works may therefore violate the author's copyright.

Similar legal rights
If a pictorial, graphic or sculptural work is a useful article, it is copyrighted only if its aesthetic features are separable from its utilitarian features. A useful article is an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. The must be separable from the functional aspect to be copyrighted.
There are two primary approaches to the separability issue: physical separability and conceptual separability. Physical separability is the ability to take the aesthetic thing away from the functional thing. Conceptual separability can be found in several different ways. It may be present if the useful article is also shown to be appreciated for its aesthetic appeal or by the design approach, which is the idea that separability is only available if the designer is able to make the aesthetic choices that are unaffected by the functional considerations. A question may also be asked of whether an individual would think of the aesthetic aspects of the work being separate from the functional aspects.
There are several different tests available for conceptual separability. The first, the Primary Use test, asks how is the thing primarily used: art or function? The second, the Marketable as Art test, asks can the article be sold as art, whether functional or not. This test does not have much backing, as almost anything can be sold as art. The third test, Temporal Displacement, asks could an individual conceptualize the article as art without conceptualizing functionality at the same time. Finally, the Denicola test says that copyrightability should ultimately depend on the extent to which the work reflects the artistic expression inhibited by functional consideration. If something came to have a pleasing shape because there were functional considerations, the artistic aspect was constrained by those concerns.

Useful articles
Copyright subsists for a variety of lengths in different jurisdictions, with different categories of works and the length it subsists for also depends on whether a work is published or unpublished. In most of the world the default length of copyright for many works is generally the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. Copyright in general always expires at the end of the year concerned, rather than on the exact date of the death of the author. (The right to reclaim a copyright--or "terminate the transfer" of a copyright--commences and ends on the anniversaries of exact dates in the United States.)
So when can one conclude that a book is in the public domain? In the United States, all books and other works published before 1923 have expired copyrights and are in the public domain. In addition, works published before 1964 that did not have their copyrights renewed 28 years after first publication year also are in the public domain, except that books originally published outside the US by non-Americans are exempt from this requirement, if they are still under copyright in their home country (see How Can I Tell Whether a Copyright Was Renewed for more details).
Under § 105[2] of the Copyright Act, all works created by the U.S. Government (other than works of standard reference data produced by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under the Standard Reference Data Act, codified at 15 U.S.C. § 290e[3]) are not subject to copyright. Note, however, that the U.S. Postal Service is a quasi-public corporation wholly owned by the U.S. Government[4], and is not part of the U.S. government, per se. Therefore, works of the Postal Service are not "works of the U.S. government" for purposes of § 105 and are generally subject to copyright. See the Compendium II: Copyright Office Practices, § 206.02(b)[5].
But if the intended exploitation of the work includes publication (or distribution of derivative work, such as a film based on a book protected by copyright) outside the U.S., the terms of copyright around the world must be considered. If the author has been dead more than 70 years, the work is in the public domain in most, but not all, countries. In Italy and France, there are wartime extensions that could increase the term by approximately 6 years in Italy and up to about 14 in France. Some works are covered by copyright in Spain for 80 years after the author's death.
As a curiosity, the famous work Peter Pan has a very complex story of copyright expiry.

How long copyright lasts
In the United States, the Copyright Office maintains that typeface designs are not covered by copyright, and it will not accept applications for their registration. See 37. C.F.R. § 202.1(e). However, if a design is novel and "non-obvious," it may be covered by design patent. See, for example, U.S. Des. Patent No. 289,773 , May 12, 1987), Charles A. Bigelow and Kris A. Holmes, inventors. Germany (in 1981) passed a special extension (Schriftzeichengesetz) to the design patent law (Geschmacksmustergesetz) for protecting them. This permits typefaces being registered as designs in Germany, too.
The United Kingdom (in 1989) has passed a law making typeface designs copyrightable. The British law also applies to designs produced before 1989.

Typefaces

Alternative Compensation System
Compulsory license
Copying
Copyleft
Copyright education
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement of software
Copyright on the content of patents
Copyright on religious works
Digital rights management
Digital watermarking
File sharing and the law
Freedom of panorama
Glossary of legal terms in technology
List of copyright treaty membership
List of leading legal cases in copyright law
List of countries' copyright length
Moral rights
Paracopyright
Production music
Public domain
Reproduction fees
Rent-seeking
Software copyright
Copyright levies
Threshold pledge system See also

Australian copyright law
Canadian copyright law
Copyright law in the People's Republic of China
Copyright law of the European Union
Dutch copyright law (The Netherlands)
French copyright law, which is based on another philosophy, not founded on "copyright" but on the "Right of the Author" (droit d'auteur).
German copyright law
Hong Kong copyright law
Japan copyright law
Jordanian copyright law
Philippine copyright law
Russian copyright law
Spanish copyright law
Copyright law of Switzerland
Copyright law of the United Kingdom
United States copyright law National copyright laws

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886
Universal Copyright Convention of 1952
Rome Convention of 1961
The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), of 1994
WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996
WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty of 1996 International treaties

Anti-copyright
Copyleft
Copynorm
Copyright-free
Creative Commons
Crypto-anarchism
Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig
Opposition to copyright
Permission culture — neologism by Lawrence Lessig.
The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs by Stephen Breyer. Critique

The Disneyland Memorial Orgy Other

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (US)
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (US)
EU Copyright Directive
Directive on harmonizing the term of copyright protection (EU) Some legislation

Further reading

China Law Blog Frequent commentary on China IP laws, including copyright China

Copyright Act of (South) Korea South Korea

[6] (In Spanish). Mexico

Law on Computer Software (Unofficial translation)
Law on Industrial Design (Unofficial translation)
Law on Invention (Unofficial translation)
Law on Trademark (Unofficial translation)
Law on Copyright (Unofficial translation)
Law on the Place of Origin (Unofficial translation) Russia

Lehman, Bruce: Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, 1995)
Gantz, John & Rochester, Jack B. (2005). Pirates of the Digital Millennium. Financial Times Prentice Hall. ISBN O-13-146315-2. 
Lindsey, Marc: Copyright Law on Campus. Washington State University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-87422-264-7.
Mazzone, Jason. Copyfraud. http://ssrn.com/abstract=787244
Moores, Simon - "March of the Spiders:" Policy Challenges for Copyright in the Digital Publishing Environment (2005)
Nimmer, Melville; David Nimmer (1997). Nimmer on Copyright. Matthew Bender. ISBN 0-8205-1465-9. 
Ghosemajumder, Shuman. Advanced Peer-Based Technology Business Models. MIT Sloan School of Management, 2002.
Silverthorne, Sean. Music Downloads: Pirates- or Customers?. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2004.
Steinberg, S.H. & Trevitt, John (1996). Five Hundred Years of Printing, 4th ed., London and New Castle: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press. ISBN 1-884718-19-1. 
Dowd, Raymond J. (2006). Copyright Litigation Handbook, 1st ed., Thomson West. ISBN 0314962794. 
Lyman Ray Patterson (1968). Copyright in Historical Perspective. Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 0826513735. 
Pievatolo, Maria Chiara. Publicness and Private Intellectual Property in Kant's Political Thought. http://bfp.sp.unipi.it/~pievatolo/lm/kantbraz.html