1. The Internet & Copyright Laws Internet Basics & Beyond Mrs. Wilson

2. What is Copyright? Copyright is a protection that covers published and unpublished literary, scientific and artistic works, whatever the form of expression, provided such works are fixed in a tangible or material form If you can see it, hear it and/or touch it—it may be protected Laws grant the creator the exclusive right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display the work publicly

3. The Internet The Internet is a relatively new frontier; the Web even newer. Because of the unique nature of digital media, some of the copyright laws that apply to printed material in the physical world don't work as well in cyberspace. As a result, there are gray areas that are hotly debated. However, some general principles apply.

4. If you think of a web page as an original creation, then it follows that you can't reproduce it in whole or in part without the permission of the original creator. Even if you are not reproducing part of someone else's work for commercial purposes, you should still get permission. The Internet

5. US Copyright Laws In general, text, graphics, animation and other intellectual property that is published on the Internet is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. You cannot use someone else's work unless you first get clearance from the copyright owner.

6. Biz Gets a Haircut Biz Markie, former human beat box and internationally famous MC, sampling Gilbert O'Sullivan? It makes one pause, but it did happen. On Biz Markie's album I Need a Haircut, the song Alone Again contains the familiar melody of Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 hit Alone Again (Naturally), as well as the titled refrain.

7. Biz Markie…. The original Biz album is now out of print, probably due to the infringement contained therein. The album has been re-released with the offending song cut from the album. Additional fallout from the infringement: Markie's subsequent album is titled All Samples Cleared!

8. Ownership Before you slap a copyright notice on your website, you should have a clear understanding of what exactly it is that you consider to be protected by copyright. There are many elements to a website, including  Text  Graphics  Script  Data  Code

9. If you created everything on the site, you can be reasonably comfortable in your ownership. However, if you had someone else create text copy, or download some clip art, or used scanned photographs from your archives, or hired a web design firm to load all of your content into an attractive package, then you need to think a little harder. Ownership

10. The Famous © Symbol Why does it say Copyright ©2004 rphs.org at the bottom of my webpage? Those are the dates that I created and/or modified the layout, text, graphics and other material displayed on this web site and saved it to my hard drive Only I, as the author and creator of this work, am entitled to use, reproduce and distribute this material unless someone else who wishes to use it obtains my prior written permission to use it as well, and only in the manner that I previously approve

11. What does this mean? Nobody may access my web site and copy my layout, text or graphics until I provide a written document that states:  Yes, you can use my work, but only in the manner that I deem appropriate This especially goes for those who want to use my material for lucrative purposes

12. Infringement Anybody who uses, copies or distributes my material in any manner, for commercial or personal purposes, without my written permission, would be committing an infringement* of my copyright As a principle of law states: "Ignorance of the Law does not make one exempt from compliance thereof." *a failure to obey a law or regulation

13. Questions Can you link to anyone you want? Do you have to get permission to link to someone else's page? Can someone prevent you from linking to their page? Can you prevent someone from linking to your page? Is there such a thing as a doctrine of Implied Public Access on the Web?

14. "Free" Web Graphics and Linking Images Graphic images provided by "free" or "linkware" graphics sites are not public domain These images, although provided to you for "free" (no $), are not being given to you in ownership You must comply with the owner's terms and conditions, so make sure that you comply with them in full when you use or display the graphics in question If the owner says, "only use for your personal homepage," only use it for your personal homepage

15. Theft of Copyright Plagiarism  From the Latin plagiarius, meaning abductor First law enacted in 1790

16. HTML Code & Copyright Hey - everyone knows that HTML coding and webpage layouts cannot be copyrighted! If you see a certain page layout and like the way it looks, you could "legally" reproduce something similar if you write the coding all by yourself without copying any of the source code from the original page The actual intangible idea may not be copyrighted What is copyrighted is the tangible result of the idea, which would be the layout written out in HTML coding and saved to a hard drive

17. Hot-linking and Spider Harvesting Hot-linking, or linking directly to another website's images and/or spider-harvesting (robots programmed to index pages and pull images onto another server) is not only bandwidth theft, but may also be construed as copyright infringement in some cases

18. Frames The use of frames to ease navigation within a site is perfectly acceptable It is not acceptable to "lock" or "trap" other web sites or pages in one's frames If I pull someone else's page with original poetry on it into my own site through the use of frames may mislead others to believe that I am the author of the poetry

19. Example…

20. Proceed with Caution… If you are not 100% sure that the material is in the public domain (sometimes "free sites" offer copyrighted material), do not use it You may be violating somebody's copyright

21. I will give credit…. Thank you to: http://www.whatiscopyright.org/