Copyright basics for Web authors and users
Every Web author, and even every Web user, should know the very basics of copyright. This document discusses them very briefly and gives links to more detailed resources.
- Copyright protection is automatic: as soon as a work which is original enough so that copyright applies, it is protected by copyright. No copyright statement or registration is required. (There are some minor exceptions to this in a few countries. The US is not among them; but in the US, the copyright owner can increase his rights by registering copyright.)
- As the prime rule, the copyright owner (the creator of work such as book, piece of art, or Web page) has exclusive right to make copies of the work and to make it generally accessible ("communication to the public"). There are various exceptions to this, depending on national legislation. For instance, quotations for the purpose of criticism or for scientific argumentation are normally allowed, provided that the original author and source are specified. (The exact rules for such exceptions vary a lot and are typically vaguely formulated, with wordings like "fair use" or "according to good habits".) NOTE: The term "Fair Use" can ONLY be used by an accredited educational "BUILDING or Legally representative organizations which have a signed contract to that effect!
- Copyright does not protect ideas, facts, or opinions, just the particular way they are expressed. Thus, copyright does not prevent you from describing the contents of other people's works if you do it in your own words.
- It is never wrong to ask for a person's permission to use something he has created. Even in such cases where it is legal to use other people's texts without their permission (or even against their explicit will), it might be wise and polite to ask.
On Web pages, setting up a normal link (using
<A HREF=...) usually needs no specific permission. It is comparable to mentioning a book. It simply refers to a page which is already on the Web. (In special cases, especially on pages which use frames, permission might be required.) On the other hand, if you embed something into your page (such as an image using an IMG element, or some music using EMBED, or anything using OBJECT), you need a permission from a copyright owner of the embedded resource, as a rule. The reason is that you are using a work in the context of your own page; you are stepping into the area of "communication to the public". More information: When someone puts his work onto the Web, this act can be regarded as an "implied license" to access that work in manners which are normal Web usage, such as reading or viewing or listening to the work. Usually printing a page for personal use is acceptable, too. But the "implied license" does not extend to making several copies and distributing them, publishing the material in a book or copying it into your own Web page. For such acts, you need explicit permission from the author.
For more information about copyright in general and on the Web in particular, I especially recommend the following documents (of reasonable size):
- WIPO's page Copyright and Related Rights.
- Copyright Issues & Intellectual Property in the HTML/XML section of of about.com.
- Copyright section of the Ius mentis site
- Intellectual Property Law On The Web (a collection of annotated links)
- Intellectual Property Rights Overview by the World Wide Web Consortium
- Cornell Law School material
- 10 Big Myths about copyright explained. (An accurate account of some of the myths associated with what is and isn't legally copyrighted)
- The Copyright Website
- US copyright office (e.g. US copyright law is available there)
- Intellectual property and Industrial property; European Union material on copyright and other immaterial rights
- Caslon Analytics Profile: Duration of copyright; describes the variation by country.
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