The only time you ever think about copyright is when you see the little c in the circle near a logo, or when people are being sued for millions of pounds for writing children's books called Barry Potty.

We all have rights, and on a site like this where everybody's contributing ideas and making suggestions, it's a good idea to know exactly what these rights are.

Afterall, you don't want JK Rowling unleashing her undead army of lawyers on you because you mistakenly copied her ideas, do you?

• Copyright laws exist to protect peoples creative efforts
• Virtually all creative work including novels, articles, plays, dance, painting, music, photographs, brands, logos, images, films, sketches, jokes and tv shows are governed by copyright laws
• These laws give the creator exclusive rights to their work, and prevent other people passing it off as their own
• The creator can sue you for copyright infringment if you use their work without their permission
• You don't need to apply for copyright on original creative works such as photographs, written works or images. Copyright is automatically applied as soon as the work is fixed in some way, for example on paper or film

When you submit anything to 4Laughs, we expect it to be entirely your own work.

If people have helped you to write or shoot a piece, have appeared it in, or you've used some of their material, you must give them full credit and be able to prove they have agreed for you to use it on 4Laughs.

The basic rule of clearance is to make sure that you have permission to use anything you've not created yourself.

You should get these permissions in writing, and keep them safe.

It's also a good idea to get them as you go along, rather than trying to do it all at the end.

It sounds complicated but we'll remind you. When you submit a video, audio or an image to 4Laughs, you will be prompted to confirm that your legal preferences are correct for each clip.

These questions always sit in your profile, so you can use them to check you haven't forgotten anything!

TOP TIPS

The easiest example to illustrate copyright infringement is music. We have to reject loads of entries purely because people have included un-cleared music tracks.

Remembering the basic rule of clearance, if you've got a video with some Radiohead playing in the background, you're going to have to prove you've got permission from the band (or whoever owns the publishing rights) to use it in your film.

Unless you've written the track yourself, it's best to avoid including music in the clips you submit to the site.

On 4Laughs we encourage users to share their ideas, and collaborate with each other to create better comedy.

Occasionally you may want to legally protect your works of comic genius.

You can copyright any scripts you write, videos, images or audio clips.

Our General Terms & Conditions set out what we can and can't do with your creations.

4Laughs is committed to supporting new comedy and so Channel 4 does not, unless we agree this with you, claim any rights of ownership in any User Generated Content. Unless you agree otherwise, you retain all ownership rights in your User Generated Content and so you will still have the right to use your User Generated Content in any way you choose.

However, by contributing content to 4Laughs, you do grant Channel 4 (and third parties authorised by Channel 4) a non-exclusive licence to use, display, publish, transmit, copy, edit, alter, store, re-format and sublicence. The full details can be found in Clause 4 of the General Terms & Conditions.