Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives the owner the exclusive right to produce, reproduce, perform, publish, adapt, translate, or telecommunicate a work, and to determine how others may do these things. Copyright does not protect ideas or facts, but rather the expression of these things once they are 'fixed' (digitally or physically). These expressions are generally referred to as "works" which encompasses books, musical scores, recordings, videos, poems, photographs, paintings, sculptures, websites, and more. 

Usually the creator of a work is the first copyright owner, but individual copyrights may be broken up and assigned, licensed, or sold to other people (e.g. an author assigning digital publishing copyrights to her publisher). This means that the author or creator may not be the copyright owner.