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.