Copyrights give authors distribution and adaptive rights over intellectual property. Intellectual property are ideas formed into a medium. Most countries have different laws that apply to intellectual ownership.
Fair use places limits on the rights of copyright holders. Parts of a work may be copied or used without the copyright owners permission for educational or research purposes.
The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the United States recording industry. Its members consist of record companies that wish to create an atmosphere that supports and promotes their views, whether they are creative or financial.
Digital Restrictions Management is a newly developed technology that effects all users of computers, various media players, cell phones, and other electronics that process media. The technology limits the amount of times media can be shared, the number of devices it can be used on, and how many times it can be copied. If media is DRM-free, it does not have this technology encoded into it.
The public domain is what most media falls into when its copyright owner has no protections on the work or works, and it can be freely used. The work is owned publicly. Eventually, all works end up in the public domain in a time frame that is dependent on the current laws, which are changed frequently by new legislation