| Taken from Internet Business Law Services, here are important excerpts that I stole: Under the Copyright Act of 1976, the basis of U.S. copyright law, copyright is automatic when an original work is first "fixed" in a tangible medium of expression. That means material is protected by copyright at the point when it is first printed, captured on film, drawn, or saved to hard drive or disk. Among original works of authorship cited in copyright statutes are "pictorial, graphic, audiovisual and sound recordings." These are broad categories that include the GIF and JPG image files and WAV audio files commonly found on the Web; U.S. copyright law has proven quite adaptable to new technologies that didn't exist when laws were written. The farsighted statute covers fixed works "now known or later developed." A notice of copyright (as in, "Copyright 1999 John Smith") is no longer necessary to affirm protection. Some presenters believe that if a work doesn't include the copyright notice, they're free to use it without permission. Wrong. If a work was put in "fixed" form, and it has even a minimal amount of originality, it's protected by law, copyright symbol or no. Copyright only applies to original expression, however. Ideas and facts cannot be copyrighted, only the original way in which that idea or fact is expressed. Thus the data and facts found on a Web site aren't protected by copyright -- but the site creator's unique expression of them is. Copyright owners have five exclusive rights: 1. The right to reproduce the copyrighted work.
2. The right to distribute copies of a copyrighted work to the public.
3. The right to prepare derivative works, or creations based on the original.
4. The right to perform the copyrighted work publicly.
5. The right to display copyrighted work publicly. Abuse any of those rights -- that is, photocopy, distribute, customize, publicly perform or display someone else's original work without permission -- and you're breaking the law. It's small comfort to know that copyright law is primarily civil law, not criminal law, so if you're caught red-handed, you'll likely get sued, not charged with a crime. Copyright violation might not put you in jail, but it can cost you plenty. Copyright protection now lasts for the lifetime of the author or creator, plus 70 years. Thus if Stephen King writes another book, or 10, this year, and then passes away due to a freak accident on Halloween night, copyright on his books would remain in effect until 2069. After those 70 years, it passes into what's called the "public domain," free to be used by anyone without permission. What if you want to use only a small fraction of a copyrighted work? The Copyright Act includes a "fair use" exception, granting the ability to use copyrighted material without written permission from the owner. But, although fair use appears intuitive, grossly liberal interpretations of the clause constitute misuse. Just because materials are on an "open" Web site doesn't mean they're in the public domain and free for you to download and reuse or copy. "Too many people still assume that because it's freely accessible on the Web, it's freely available to reuse," says Professor Bell. "The right for you to view something on the Web is different from the right for you to display or perform it on your own site or presentation." To be in the public domain -- and free of copyright complications -- information on the Web must have been placed there "expressly or deliberately" by the copyright owner himself, most obviously with an accompanying note saying, "I grant this to the public domain." Plenty of copyrighted works have been posted to the Web without authorization of the copyright holder. If you reuse that information without permission, you're breaking copyright law. Lack of knowledge about whether the information you take from the Web has itself been illegally copied or posted is no defense.
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