I just re-read with the opening post and realized it contains some misinformation in the first two sections.
Most things are, however certain creations are not subject to copyright protection, e.g. ideas, names and titles, factual or false information, game mechanics, game show formats, and, with some caveats, fashion and food. That soup you cooked yesterday? Not copyright-protected, even if you made it from scratch according to your own recipe.
Not sure what this is meant to imply, but obviously copyright doesn't protect tools you create something with or I would now be a copyright holder of MS Paint. If somebody uses your pencil without your knowledge, they aren't breaking copyright laws.
If anybody wants to use your copyright-protected creations, period, they need your permission to do so. It doesn't matter whether the use is commercial or not, or whether it's a company or a single person. The only exception to this is provided by fair use laws and protects material such as commentary, research, criticism, and parody. Among other things, unlicensed fan art is illegal. Including all pictures of Jazz in our art forum that don't follow fan content policy of Epic Games by accompanying the work with the following disclaimer: "Portions of the materials used are trademarks and/or copyrighted works of Epic Games, Inc. All rights reserved by Epic. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Epic."
No. The only requirement to call something freeware is that it doesn't cost money to acquire and use. Just because it's free doesn't grant you the right to "spread it around", i.e. you're still not allowed to copy or redistribute the software without permission from the author (which, however, is in this case often granted, in the form of a license, but may limit how you do it, e.g. you always have to include all files and give credit when redistributing the work). The original author still holds all rights guaranteed by copyright law, both to designs and content. For example, just because a game is freeware does not allow you to reverse-engineer it. In fact the only way to lose copyright protection is to let it expire, or in legal systems that support it, donate the work to public domain. Typically what creators do instead is distribute their work under a very liberal license, which is an action that doesn't actually rid them of any rights... just grants everyone else the right to circumvent them.