What is copyright...

"Copyright is a protection that covers published and unpublished literary, scientific and artistic works, whatever the form of expression, provided such works are fixed in a tangible or material form. This means that if you can see it, hear it and/or touch it - it may be protected. If it is an essay, if it is a play, if it is a song, if it is a funky original dance move, if it is a photograph, HTML coding or a computer graphic that can be set on paper, recorded on tape or saved to a hard drive, it may be protected. Copyright laws grant the creator the exclusive right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display the work publicly. Exclusive means only the creator of such work, not anybody who has access to it and decides to grab it.

Material provided by others and used with permission. Midis, graphic images (including web graphics, photos, logos and other digital art), writings, text, HTML, javascripts or other material that you are given permission to use or display on your web site does not entitle you to claim copyright to the material in question. Permission to use someone else's material does not make you the rightful owner or holder. Therefore, the © symbol at the bottom of the web site only pertains to the content that you actually created, not to what was created by another and is being used with permission. Owner's terms may vary, but it is always best to include text on the same page where the material on loan is being used to specify who the real owner is, and that it is being used with permission. To an extent, this would protect you as well as the appropriate owner as it would be notifying the public that the material is owned by someone...if you failed to properly protect someone else's work that you are using and it turns out that someone else swiped it due to your misuse or negligence you may be subjecting yourself to a claim

"Free" web graphics and linking images. Graphic images provided by "free" or "linkware" graphics sites are not public domain. These images, although provided to you for "free" (no $), are not being given to you in ownership. You are being allowed to use them if you comply with the owner's terms and conditions, so make sure that you comply with them in full when you use or display the graphics in question. If the owner says "don't alter it", don't alter it. If the owner says, "only use for your personal homepage," only use it for your personal homepage. The same applies to linking images or logos. They are still copyrighted by the owner and are usually only to be used for links to the owner's web site. Again, in these cases the © symbol at the bottom of your web site only pertains to the content that you yourself created, not to the logos provided to you for links or the "free" graphics loaned to you to decorate your web pages.

Everyone belives that HTML coding cannot be copyrighted! Based upon what? The HTML coding of a web page may be copyrighted if it was actually written and/or designed by the author and is fixed in a tangible medium by being saved to a hard drive. If you wanted, you could put your HTML into a text file and print it out, couldn't you? Doesn't that make it tangible - something you can read or look at? However, this only applies if one actually wrote the HTML coding and designed the web page layout by oneself (even if one uses an HTML editor)...if one copies and pastes HTML from one web page into another one may not claim copyright. It is not an original work, and may even be construed as copyright infringement. There is one thing that must be clarified, though. If you see a certain page layout and like the way it looks, you could "legally" reproduce something similar if you wrote the coding all by yourself. The actual intangible idea may not be copyrighted. What is copyrighted is the tangible medium...the written HTML coding that is saved to a hard drive. That means no copying and pasting. Still, be careful with this and don't think that you can start copying whatever web page ideas or layouts you want. There is a fine line between "legally copying" (for lack of a better word) and "copyright infringement"."

by R. Delgado-Martinez, Esq. licensed attorney