Group assignment -Q4

NO 4. Is web content protected by copyright laws or can it be considered as public domain info?

  Writing an article is painstaking work, which requires a lot of time and effort. So when the writer is able to track down the person who distributed the work without permission, he or she may be able to sue for copyright violation.

  Copyright in simple words, is the right of the owner to permit someone to reproduce his or her work to anywhere. But how would the author know of the copyright violation? Writers usually read a lot and may stumble on a work of theirs on the net. Thus, even if the author does not find out, there are programs that search for matching text and content and many companies use these options to protect their content from theft. 

  Many people they just think that the information, images, graphics, and content are on the Internet are “free” to take and steal. But that is wrong! The information, images, content, and graphics all are protected under copyright laws and are known as intellectual property. The information, image, content, and graphic is free to read, look at, wonder about, and even write about. It is not free to steal, make money from it, or use it as your own. 

  There are some ways to protect the content of the web site which is register the content of the web site for copyright protection before the publication of the work. So the writer has the protection on their content. Writer also needs to display the clear sentences like “This article is protected under copyright laws.”, “Do not copy the contents as they are protected by copyright” or, at the bottom of each page, put the © symbol, the year (i.e., 2003 or 1998-2003), and who owns the material, whether it is your company or yourself. (Sbinfocanada, 2010) So the original content will be respected and protected.

  Actually what is public domain mean? The meaning of the public domain is, when a work is written, it's protected under copyright for a certain period of time. The exact length of time varies depending on the type of work and when it is created. Once a copyright expires, that work is considered to be in the public domain, and anyone can utilize and change the work in part or in whole, without copyright infringement. (life123, 2010)

  Here are a few good places to go for public domain to find the materials that can legitimately use. Which is “public domain image resources on Wikipedia” it is a places to find great images in the public domain. “Moving images collection at the internet archives” is an awesome set of video clips. “PD Info” is provides access to public domain and royalty-free music, as well as good information about how to determine whether a given song is indeed public domain. “Creative Commons search” is provides a wealth of images, video, and music for you to use. It actually searches across several databases including Flicker and Google. (Stratepedia, 2010) Note that some materials may be licensed in such a way that attribution of the original creator is required; even if it’s not required attribution’s still considered by many to be the cool thing to do.

  Although the information, image, graphic, and content become public domain, people should not use the information or content without getting permission. If the people want to use the information such as a complete article, story or essay, people should not use more than 2500 words or less than 10% of the work. (sbinfocanada, 2010)

 

  Thus, most of the web content is protected by the copyright laws although the web also can be considered as public domain. So, when the people want to use the content from the web, they can use it as public domain but not to copy all the content from the web because it will be copyright violence if copy all the content.

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