By JP Lafferty
Lets start with copyright infringement.
It is easily explained as copying someone else's work withoutgaining permission first. This includes publishing other peopleswork to your web site, newspaper, magazine or even justdownloading it to your computer can be seen as copyrightinfringement. The last is known as a grey area.
Other peoples work means anything created by a person. It can bewritten content, graphical content, musical content or evenhtml, JavaScript, PHP, CGI, patterns, textures, animations. Itis anything tangible that's created by a person. NOTE: A ideacannot be copyrighted due to the fact it is not tangible.
Example....
I have just finished reading a book on how to service my car.The author of the book explains in detail the different ways aperson can go about the job. He also details tips and tricks hehas learnt over the years that speed up the servicing.
Now after putting into practice what the author wrote I could goand write my own book on how to service my car, right?
Right!
Why? Well the author can only copyright the content of his book(words, pictures... etc) he cannot copyright the practice oridea there in. This can be viewed in many different ways so ifyour unsure it is always best to at least email the authorbefore taking any action with there material.
The short and sweet way of looking at this is your content nomatter what creative medium it falls under is automaticallycopyrighted to you for the duration of your life. It can only bebroken if you decide to give your content away for free (youmust state that it is copyright free material) or you die andnobody registers for the copyright to your material.
This leads us to Public Domain material.....
Before 1978 copyright only lasted 27 seven years. These days itlasts the duration of the creators life. Therefor from theminute you create your work it is automatically copyrighted toyou. It is still important to state this wherever you decide topublish your material.
Public Domain material has no copyright and can be used inanyway you see fit. Also unless you change it in someway it isstill Public Domain. So if you find a book that is in the PublicDomain and you start selling it on EBay, there is nothingstopping the people who buy it from selling it themselves.That's why it is important to change the material. Add somethingto it so it stands out or modernize the language so people canunderstand the material better. Any changes copyright the "new"book to you.
Anything published before 1928 falls under Public Domain. Thatis of course unless someone got there first and changed thematerial in some way. You have to watch out for that. It couldget you into trouble.
That's the basics. For a more detailed insight into copyright goto GOV.
Also depending on your country things maybe different so makesure you know where you stand.
Personal Note......
Copyrighting your work is a good thing. You are the sole ownerof what you create and so you should be. There is a problem herethough. Once your material is published to the web, book,magazine or even TV your leaving your material open to abuse.
This could be viewed as unfortunate but truthfully if it wasn'tfor copying other peoples HTML code I would have never learnedHTML. It was the same for Java Script and Graphic Design. Evenwriting and game creation were learnt from copying others first.
It is also well known that internet marketers keep somethingcalled a Swipe File on there computer. This is where they pasteitems of interest they find on the web. It is a digitalscrapbook basically.
People learn by first copying and then creating. It is thenatural order of life to copy others. So if you want to bestrict about your copyright that's fine. Just remember how youlearnt what you know before you draw a line in the sand:
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