Copyright Issues for Web Publishers

Robyn Fizz

It's a snap to copy text, images, or videos from a Web page and 
incorporate them into your own Web pages. And in the fast-paced 
digital arena, this may seem like a natural thing to do. However, just 
because online text or artwork is easy to copy doesn't mean that you 
have a right to use it without the copyright owner's permission.
 
Many Web publishers aren't clear about how copyright applies to 
works that are distributed electronically. This article offers some 
guidelines and lists a few Web sites where you can get more 
information on copyright issues, especially as they apply to the Web.

The Same Rules Apply
You may have heard rumors about  copyright reform, intended to 
address the issues raised by Internet technology. Indeed, a 
government committee, the Working Group on Intellectual Property, 
produced a somewhat infamous White Paper on the topic in 1995. 
(In one of its recommendations on copyright, copying would occur as 
soon as computer users download HTML code onto their computers.) 

However, things have not changed substantially since the U.S. 
Copyright Act of 1976. Copyright protects the tangible expression of 
a creative work;  in this respect, content on the Web is no different 
than the content of traditional publications. Online text, photos, 
graphics, videos, music, and software are all protected by copyright.

Ownership, Registration, Duration
The author of a work is not always the owner of the copyright: it 
might belong, for example, to an employer or a publisher. While an 
author (or owner) can register his or her work with the U.S. 
Copyright Office, registration isn't required. Protection exists even 
in the absence of a copyright notice, which typically looks something 
like this:

Copyright C 1997 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The copyright holder has exclusive control over a work's use, 
reproduction, distribution, display, performance, and the creation of 
derivative works. For works created since 1978, copyright held by an 
employer lasts 75 years from the date of publication or 100 years 
from the date of creation, whichever occurs first. If the author holds 
the copyright, the term of copyright is the life of the author, plus 50 
years.

Practical Guidelines
That's copyright in a nutshell, stripped of its legal complexities. The 
guidelines that follow are also very simple: they are meant as basic 
rules of the road and do not address all the copyright issues a Web 
publisher may encounter. Sources for these guidelines were the 
Copyright FAQs page at 
 
http://web.mit.edu/cwis/faq/guidelines.html

and a presentation made by staff from the Lemelson-MIT Prize 
Program who maintain the Invention Dimension site at

http://web.mit.edu/invent/

* Copyrighted Materials. Assume that materials you find on the Web 
are copyrighted unless a disclaimer or waiver is expressly stated. 
You should not place any copyrighted works on your Web page 
without the express permission of the copyright owner. If you want 
to include something from another Web page in one of your Web 
pages, link to it rather than copy it.

You may include quotations of a few words provided you identify the 
author and the work from which the quotation is taken.
 
* Licensed Materials. Materials licensed to MIT by their owner - for 
example, Dilbert cartoons, Encyclopaedia Britannica entries, or 
articles from The Washington Post - are restricted to use within MIT. 
No one has the right to place these materials on Web pages or 
redistribute them.

* Original Materials. If you plan to hire a writer, designer, or 
photographer to create material for your Web site, have them sign a 
contract assigning you copyright of the material, or at least spelling 
out your rights to its use. You can get sample contracts from 
the Office of Intellectual Property Counsel in NE25-230.

* Pictures and Video. Don't place any pictures or videos of people on 
a Web page without the permission of the people in the picture or 
video. Every person has a right of privacy which includes some right 
to restrict certain uses of his or her own image. In addition, the 
picture or video will most likely be protected by copyright.

If someone provides you with a photograph, find out if that person 
has the rights to it. For example, a portrait may be the physical 
property of the subject, but the copyright may be owned by the 
photographer.

* Works in the Public Domain. To avoid the effort involved in 
tracking down copyrights and getting permissions, or the expense of 
paying for original work, you can use material from the public 
domain. For more information about works in the public domain, see

http://www.benedict.com/webiss.htm#public

Resources on Campus
If you're a Web publisher and have questions about copyright, 
contact the CWIS team at x3-0101 or the Office of Intellectual 
Property Counsel at x3-1606.

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Resources on the Web about Copyright Issues

Copyright Information (compiled for MIT's Copyright Working Group)
 
http://web.mit.edu/cwis/copyright/


The Copyright Website (Be sure to check out the link on Web issues.)

http://www.benedict.com/


An Intellectual Property Law Primer for Multimedia and Web 
Developers

http://www.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/ip-primer


Internet Law Simplified: Helpful Articles for Writers and Publishers
 
http://home.earthlink.net/~ivanlove/helpful.html


Multimedia Law Repositories and Related Links

http://www.oikoumene.com/oikoumene/mmlinks.html