Copyright Law Tips from Daily Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips’ article, “Copyright Law: 12 Do’s and Don’ts”, is a great step-by-step list of the basic things you need to know about copyright law, especially when it comes to protecting and copyrighting your content, as well as using the content of others.

I really liked some of the items under the “Don’t” list:

7. Don’t assume that if you credit the author there is no copyright infringement: A lot of people wrongly think that if they credit the author of an article or image they are not violating the copyright law. You can only use copyrighted material if you have explicit permission from the author to do so (or if you make fair use of it, as explained before).

8. Don’t copy material just because it does not show a copyright message: The Copyright Law required a copyright notice to protect works until 1977. In 1978, however, the law changed and abolished the requirement for copyright notice. This means that every published work (be it on paper or digital media) automatically gets copyright protection, whether expressed with a notice or not.

9. Don’t equate Creative Commons with “free for grab”: While Creative Commons licenses are less restrictive then standard copyright they should not be interpreted a “free for grab”. In order to understand what you can or can not do with Creative Commons material you should check what kind of license it is using. Certain licenses will require you to credit the original author, while others will require that you release any modifications of the document under the same license.

If it is on the web, it is not free for the taking. Got it? Good.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

4 Comments

Daily Facts

Posted November 7, 2007 at 9:58 pm | Permalink

Guess what? Your blog is amazing! I can’t remember when was the last time i’ve overcome such a good blog that almost all articles/posts were interesting and wouldn’t regret spending my time reading it. I hope you will keep up the great work you are doing here and i can enjoy my everyday read at your blog.

law updates

Posted November 18, 2008 at 11:37 pm | Permalink

[…] Copyright Law Tips from Daily Blog Tips […]

RJK

Posted February 6, 2012 at 9:25 pm | Permalink

i have a unique situation/question… previous business partners ran business into the ground by stealing every penny earned by the company, the business was terminated, ex-partners then took intellectual property (company assets which weren’t legally disbursed among owners) created by the owners and are still using it for commercial/financial gain without my permission or compensatory relief… ex-partners say they own the intellectual property and are the sole creators of it yet I own all the equipment used to capture the images and I operated the equipment resulting in said intellectual property… ex-partners have now filed for a copyright with US copyright office saying that they are the sole creators of said work which is a complete lie… where is/are the article(s) that addresses fraudulent filing of copyright and recourse for this type of copyright infringement?

Regards,

Infringed upon

- Lorelle VanFossen
  
  Posted February 6, 2012 at 10:33 pm | Permalink
  
  Please contact a lawyer for advice on this and check the government laws on copyright for your country. It’s too complicated to cover and not part of copyright issues related to web content. Good luck.