[jcranmer]

> If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it.

Not necessarily. For example, work for hire, or copyright being assigned to the employer. Or maybe the work itself isn't copyrightable in the first place. There's even a fun provision where US government work doesn't have any copyright in the first place! You might also have transferred the copyright of your work after you created it in a way which doesn't give you any retained rights.