Chapters 5 : Business, Issues and Controversies
Sections 3 : Internet Controversies
In the past published materail was able to be controled and copyrighted. With
the Internet different issues have risen. Any user of the Internet be it for
business or not should be aware of copyright issues. Because of information
flooding the Internet, copyright issues have become threaten. Copyright issues
are dealt with varying degrees on the Internet.
Copyright is a right of intellectual property, whereby authors obtain, for
a limited time, certain exclusive rights to their works. All original material
is protected by copyright. If you are using the material already protected by a
company, you need to get prior permission from the company before using it.
In most countries, copyright is exclusively a federal law, and it is protected
by the governemnt. Some examples of works protected by copyrights include:
news storeies, software, novels, graphics, prictures, Newsgroup messages, and even
Electronic mail (E-mail). It seems everything on the Internet is copyrighted.
However, that is not completely true. There is a concept of public domain, which
is the direct opposite to copyright. Public domain material can be access and freely used by anyone for any purpose.
The U.S. Copyright Office provides various circulars with information about
copyright within the United States. Note that the laws of other nations
govern the status of copyright protection of works within their boundaries;
a work may be protected abroad even though its copyright has expired in the
United States. Extra territorial uses of copyrighted works are governed by
laws other than United States law.
The one difficult issue with copyright laws is any expression can
be copyrighted. This means as soon as an expression is tangible, it
is automatically copyrighted. Therefore, partically everything one
sees on the Internet is protected. However, there are limitations as
to what is eligible for copyright. Ideas, facts, titles, names, short
phrases and blank forms are not eligible for copyright protection.
In Web publishing, the contents of the Web page is protected by
copyright. This is because a Web page is similar to a book, magazine,
and CD-ROM.
Here is one
of many site that can provide more information on Copyrighting
material.
Previous Section
Next Section
Table of Contents