We recently had a lecture about copyright and its importance to an artist and it is really beneficial to know straight ahead how important it is to maintain your intellectual property and what you can get away with.
In the UK the duration of copyright is for a lifetime and 70 years after the artist has passed away. For music however it is 70 years from the recording date
Apparently in the UK copyright is automatic, but to whom the copyright may belong, well that depends if the artist in question was paid by someone to do it or not. If an individual person creates a movie, drawing, music and such, the copyright automatically belong to him, however if he works for a company/director that pays him to create it, the copyright is owned by the company/director. There is also the option of selling/buying copyright from others.
In order to use someones work for your own reasons, you should ask permission of whoever owns the copyright, but if it is for educational purpose you may use it without permission. If for instance I were to take a trending animation character and make some sort of merchandise with it just so I would make some money off it, would get me into trouble, but if I were to make an animated short and put someones music on it so I could put it up for evaluation in college, that's alright. So I guess the reason is really important in this case.
All in all it is important to protect your work from plagiarism and such, so it is useful to know the ins and out of copyright laws for your own benefit.
