Copyright 101
One of the biggest concerns for anyone running an online business deals with our ethical and legal obligations and responsibilities as website owners. More specifically, I think our biggest concern should be with the issue of Copyright. Unfortunately, copyright is something that far too many website owners are ignorant about. And as a result, they are stealing the copyright protected content of other people’s websites on a daily basis.
Let’s see how much you know about copyright as it applies to the Internet. Go the following website and take their Copyright quiz. After you take it, click on the link at the bottom of their page to see the correct answers.
How’d you do?
If you got any of those wrong, it wouldn’t hurt to do some brushing up on copyright laws. If you missed more than three, I’d say you have a lot of homework to do. It is your obligation as a website owner to know as much as you can about copyright laws and issues–to protect your own content, and to ensure that you are not infringing upon the copyrights of others.
Perhaps one of the best ways to understand copyright is to know what is not protected by copyright laws. So here’s a list for you.
- Any works that have not been fixed in a tangible form (recorded on paper, tape, disc, etc).
- Ideas, concepts, methods, procedures, discoveries, systems, etc.
- Titles, names, slogans, short phrases, familiar slogans or designs.
- Works consisting entirely of common property and that have no original authorship (things like calendars, charts, and measures), or things like blank forms that are created only to record information rather than to convey it.
And here is a list of things that are protected by copyright laws.
- Text
- Images, Graphics, and any other tangible visual creations
- Any other data
- Recorded Sound
- HTML and any other types of code
- Any of the above also found via search engines
If you violate copyright laws, you also risk consequences, so it’s good to know those as well, especially as they relate to your website.
- Duplicate content, which can be created by stealing content from another website, gets penalized with the search engines. The end result can be the removal of your website from all search engine indexes.
- If you have an AdWords or AdSense account with Google, they can terminate your account and you can forfeit your earnings.
- If the owner of the copyright reports you to your ISP, your ISP can close your account.
- If you are reported to your web host, they also can close your account.
- You can be faced with civil and sometimes criminal lawsuits, fees and penalties, and legal fees–including the plaintiff’s!
It’s also important to note that ignorance of copyright laws is not a legal defense for violating them; you will be found guilty whether you knew it was wrong or not. And even if someone else built your website for you and they are the ones who stole the content, you are still legally responsible, because it’s your website. So you can see how imperative it is to fully educate yourself on copyright laws.
Be sure to visit our Copyright Myths page for more information.
