General  Information about copyright   Return to Copyright Conditions Page

1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted."

It is true that a notice strengthens the protection, by warning people, and by allowing one to get more and different damages, but it is not necessary. If it looks copyrighted, you should assume it is. This applies to pictures, too. You may not scan pictures from magazines and post them to the net, and if you come upon something unknown, you shouldn't post that either.

The correct form for a notice is:

"Copyright <dates> by <author/owner>"

2) "If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation."

3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain."

Some argue that posting to Usenet implicitly grants permission to everybody to copy the posting within fairly wide bounds, and others feel that Usenet is an automatic store and forward network where all the thousands of copies made are done at the command (rather than the consent) of the poster. This is a matter of some debate, but even if the former is true (and in this writer's opinion we should all pray it isn't true) it simply would suggest posters are implicitly granting permissions "for the sort of copying one might expect when one posts to Usenet" and in no case is this a placement of material into the public domain. Furthermore it is very difficult for an implicit licence to supersede an explicitly stated licence that the copier was aware of.

Note that all this assumes the poster had the right to post the item in the first place. If the poster didn't, then all the copies are pirate, and no implied licence or theoretical reduction of the copyright can take place.

(*) Copyrights can expire after a long time, putting someting into the public domain, and there are some fine points on this issue regarder older copyright law versions. However, none of this applies to an original article posted to USENET.

Note that granting something to the public domain is a complete abandonment of all rights. You can't make something "PD for non-commercial use." If your work is PD, other people can even modify one byte and put their name on it.

4) "My posting was just fair use!"

• The "fair use" exemption to copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations. Are you reproducing an article from the New York Times because you needed to in order to criticise the quality of the New York Times, or because you couldn't find time to write your own story, or didn't want your readers to have to pay to log onto the online services with the story or buy a copy of the paper? The former is probably fair use, the latter probably aren't.
• Fair use is almost always a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use more of the work than is necessary to make the commentary.) It should not harm the commercial value of the work (which is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is generally forbidden.)

It's a risky defence to attempt.

5) "If you don't defend your copyright you lose it."

6) "Somebody has that name copyrighted!"

You can't copyright words, but you can trademark them, generally by using them to refer to your brand of a generic type of product or service. Like an "Apple" computer. Apple Computer "owns" that word applied to computers, even though it is also an ordinary word. Apple Records owns it when applied to music. Neither owns the word on its own, only in context, and owning a mark doesn't mean complete control -- see a more detailed treatise on this law for details.

You can't use somebody else's trademark in a way that would unfairly hurt the value of the mark, or in a way that might make people confuse you with the real owner of the mark, or which might allow you to profit from the mark's good name. For example, if I were giving advice on music videos, I would be very wary of trying to label my works with a name like "mtv." :-)

7) "They can't get me, defendants in court have powerful rights!"

It's mostly which side and set of evidence the judge or jury accepts or believes more, though the rules vary based on the type of infringement. In civil cases you can even be made to testify against your own interests.

8) "Oh, so copyright violation isn't a crime or anything?"

9) "It doesn't hurt anybody -- in fact it's free advertising."

Don't rationalize whether it hurts the owner or not, *ask* them. Usually that's not too hard to do. Time past, ClariNet published the very funny Dave Barry column to a large and appreciative Usenet audience for a fee, but some person didn't ask, and forwarded it to a mailing list, got caught, and the newspaper chain that employs Dave Barry pulled the column from the net, pissing off everybody who enjoyed it. Even if you can't think of how the author or owner gets hurt, think about the fact that piracy on the net hurts everybody who wants a chance to use this wonderful new technology to do more than read other people's flamewars.

10) "They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it."

• These days, almost all things are copyrighted the moment they are written, and no copyright notice is required.
• Copyright is still violated whether you charged money or not, only damages are affected by that.
• Postings to the net are not granted to the public domain, and don't grant you any permission to do further copying except *perhaps* the sort of copying the poster might have expected in the ordinary flow of the net.
• Fair use is a complex doctrine meant to allow certain valuable social purposes. Ask yourself why you are republishing what you are posting and why you couldn't have just rewritten it in your own words.
• Copyright is not lost because you don't defend it; that's a concept from trademark law. The ownership of names is also from trademark law, so don't say somebody has a name copyrighted.
• Copyright law is mostly civil law where the special rights of criminal defendants you hear so much about don't apply.
• Watch out, however, as new laws are moving copyright violation into the criminal realm.
• Don't rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder; often it's not that hard to ask permission.
• Posting E-mail is technically a violation, but revealing facts from E-mail isn't, and for almost all typical E-mail, nobody could wring any damages from you for posting it.

Permission is granted to freely copy this document in electronic form, or to print for personal use. If you had not seen a notice like this on the document, you would have to assume you did not have permission to copy it.

This document is still protected by you-know- what even though it has no copyright notice.