Copyright law can be broadly viewed as a system seeking an appropriate
legal balance between the rights of authors and publishers on one hand and
the rights of users and consumers on the other. Many issues in copyright law
directly affect how this balance is drawn, ranging from the constitutional
limitation of the copyright monopoly to the "Writings"' of "Authors," 2 with
its corollary requirement that a work be original to qualify for copyright
protection, 3 to such statutory or judicial limitations as the "idea-expression"
distinction, 4 standards for determining infringement, 5 and the affirmative
defense of fair use.