R. Craig Collins > Web Page Design > Copyright

©opyright © R. Craig Collins, 2005/6

To US Copyright Office, Library of Congress

Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights protect the rights of those who create something.

The way this applies to web pages, very briefly, is as follows.

If you create something, and put it in a tangible form, it is automatically copyrighted. A web page is a fixed, tangible form, and therefore it is copyrighted. It helps if you note this on your material with the ©, and it helps if you register your material with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, but these steps are not required.

Once created, no one can use your material without permission until their copyright or patent expires. Period.

This also means you may not use other people's material on your web site without their permission. Period.

Some sites have notices, which state that you may use their drawings, etc.; this is their way of granting you permission. If this notice is not present, you must ask them. E-mail is usually is not considered legal permission, as there is no signature.

Legal Gray Areas

It is possible to get a picture of Mickey Mouse from sites aside from Disney, and while these 'generous' sites may grant you permission to use their version of Mickey... they did not have permission in the first place, so them granting you permission to copy it to your site is useless. They are breaking the law, and you would be distributing illegal copies.

It is possible to pull an image from Disney, and display it on your site, which seems legal, as you are not storing the image. And, Disney had put it up there on the Internet already for people to look at... but this is theft of bandwidth, and the image is not being used as the copyright holders intended.

Finally, copyrights do expire, normally 50 years after the death of the author, or 75 years after the item was released if the author is still alive.

How you can copyright something someone else made.
Aside from being able to copyright the original, you can also copyright your version, if you have permission to make your own version.

Example: Barnes and Noble can copyright the Sherlock Holmes books they publish, or the New York Philharmonic can copyright their performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, IF they have the legal right to publish or perform the material. Both original copyrights have expired, but these new, legal expressions can be copyrighted... preventing you from photocopying a book, or copying a CD.

You can make your own version of the Mona Lisa if you paint it, but if you scan a photograph to edit, you are violating the copyright of the photographer.

To US Copyright Office, Library of Congress