Copyright and the Internet

There seems to be a lot of confusions about copyright and the Internet. Copyright law itself is complicated, but with the Internet, where so many different me forms of media come together, the situation becomes even more complicated.

To help avoid problems with copyright, there are several things you should be aware of:

Just because a site does not have a copyright symbol (©) on the bottom of the page does not mean the information on the site is not copyrighted. In fact, just about everything on the Internet is copyrighted. Text, pictures, even the design of a site are considered copyrighted. Do not copy and paste text from other sites, or use pictures from other sites, because doing so can make you subject to a potential lawsuit and fines.

Make sure you have permission before you use anything from other sites or sources. Even Wikipedia has restrictions about using the text from their site.

The safest way to make sure you are protected is to create your own text and use your own pictures. This not only protects you from any copyright issues, it also gives you unique content for your site that can be targeted specifically to your customer base.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

How to Protect Your Content

There are some very easy ways to protect your website from someone illicitly copying it and using it for their own. The first step is to create a back up copy of your site and burn it to a DVD or CD. This can be used as an evidentiary backup copy in case you ever need to use it as support in some kind of dispute. This is a generally wise idea anyway as you want to make sure you preserve your site without relying on electronic copies. I would recommend making a physical copy of the site at least once a month but no less than every 3 months. Having a physical copy of it in your hand can be extremely valuable.

Another way of protecting your content on your site is to make sure it is registered at the U.S. Copyright office. This is relatively inexpensive (about $35.00) and relatively easy as well. Go to the U.S. Copyright website for instructions on how to do this. This is probably one of the must secure ways to protect your content as well as one of the surest.

These are the only ways of protecting text, besides keeping your ear to the ground and paying attention to any and all possible competitors. That can be a lot of work. With protecting images you have a few options. One of the best is adding a digital watermark. There are software programs out there that will help you do this and it is a pretty sure way of keeping track of your images online and making sure no one is stealing them for their own uses. Doing a search in Google or another search engine will be sure to net you some very useful results.

Most importantly, your content should change from time to time just to make sure everything is fresh and that your buyers have a motivation to come back. Return visits and buyers are the important thing. You want to capture your customer’s attention, hold it and turn them into raving fans and buyers of your products.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More on U.S. Copyright Law

You’ve worked hard to build your website. Long hours spent coming up with the perfect text, taking pictures of your business, working with the designer to build the site, finding great ways to market it. It’s been a long road but worth it as it is paying off in return business now.

Then one day, someone says, “Hey, I went to thisonesite.com and it looks a lot like yours. Is that your site too?” You go to the website and find that not only does it look like yours, but they have copied your text and even taken some of your pictures. Imagine how upset you would be! Instead of going to work on their own and doing their own research and work they’ve essentially taken what you’ve created and “borrowed” it for their own profit. You would be burning up!

Luckily, you can protect yourself against this type of theft. For one thing, as discussed in Friday’s blog article as soon as you put down your text in tangible form, either electronic or written, it is protected under U.S. Copyright law. The exact definition of what is protected by Copyright is as follows: (Taken directly from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf)

“Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:

1 literary works

2 musical works, including any accompanying words

3 dramatic works, including any accompanying music

4 pantomimes and choreographic works

5 pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works

6 motion pictures and other audiovisual works

7 sound recordings

8 architectural works

These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer programs and most “compilations” may be registered as “literary works”; maps and architectural plans may be registered as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.”

These definitions certainly go a long ways towards protecting your site content; however you can and probably should go to extra lengths to protect your content. It isn’t hard to do so and is very much worth it in the long run. These days, if you publish to the web, you can almost guarantee that at some point someone will attempt to “borrow” your content.

I’ll have more on this important subject tomorrow.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

U.S. Copyright Law and You

When writing the copy for your site, it will be tempting to look at others who have written essentially the same thing; your competitors and others in similar industries, and perhaps to ‘borrow’ some of their ideas. It is a lot of work to come up with all new content on your own, especially if you are essentially starting from scratch with no copy of your own. It is a good thing that you research what others are doing, what is not good is to copy or take without permission any content from another site and put it on your own as if it is yours. There are copyright laws that protect website owners from just such plagiarism; besides it just being downright sneaky. If you worked your tail off coming up with unique content for your site the last thing you would want to do would be have someone else take that content and use if for their own without so much as a thank you.

But what exactly is Copyright?

According to the United States Copyright Office and their website, copyright.org, Copyright is the following:

“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

• To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;

• To prepare derivative works based upon the work;

• To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

• To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisualworks;

• To display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and

• In the case of sound recordings,* to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

In addition, certain authors of works of visual art have the rights of attribution and integrity as described in section 106A of the 1976 Copyright Act. For further information, see Circular 40, Copyright Registration for Works of the
Visual Arts.

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights. In some cases, these limitations are specified exemptions from copyright liability. One major limitation is the doctrine of “fair use,” which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act. In other instances, the limitation takes the form of a “compulsory license” under which certain limited uses of copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory conditions. For further information about the limitations of any of these rights, consult the copyright law or write to the Copyright Office.”

This is pretty definitive as to what you can and cannot do. More tomorrow on this extremely important subject.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.