Copyright Issues and Your Website

One of the most important things to bear in mind about copyright is that there is no official system for registering your material as your own, however there are certain steps that you can take to ensure that you have some rights over the use or re-use of your published content.

Copyright law protects any original literary, artistic, musical or dramatic works, including in their published format (i.e broadcasts, CDs, DVDs etc.). In terms of the internet, your site's content is protected by copyright law in a literary capacity, and as such, any adaptation (taking your content and modifying it before re-publishing it), copying (saving to computer or other medium) or distribution of it by another without your permission counts as an infringement if done without your consent. However, a user of your site does not necessarily need to seek permission from you to make temporary copies of the content (e.g. a student writing an essay printing out your document for reference, so long as he credits the work to you).

There are some exceptions to what can and can't be protected by copyright though - titles or names in particular do not come under copyright protection, though in some cases they can be registered as a trademark (separate issue!). Neither is the idea behind your work protected by copyright, and as such there is nothing to stop another person taking the idea of your site and developing their own version (providing they do not use any of your actual content).

In general terms, if you are the original author of the content in question, you are automatically the copyright holder for that work, however, if you produced it as part of your job, the work is actually the intellectual property of your employer. Another key point to note is that copyright exists outside the ownership of the content, so if you eventually decide to sell your website to a third party, unless agreed otherwise, you are still the copyright holder for any work on the site that you produced.

Different countries have different rules as to how long copyright exists over a piece of work, so be sure to check for your country, and also the length of time can vary depending on the medium aswell (literary, audio etc.).

So how do you protect your work? Well, in some countries, your work is automatically protected as soon as you produce it and no other actions on your behalf are needed, however in other countries you are required to mark your work with the international copyright mark (©), followed by your name and the year of publication, so in an international context such as the internet, this is the best procedure to follow. It also is a helpful thing to have done if you do ever have any issues with someone making unauthorised use of your works.

The best thing to do is have a look at other websites and see what they have in their copyright notices (most websites have it in the footer of every page).