Copyright Laws

Copyright law generally gives authors, artists, composers and other such creators the exclusive right to copy, distribute, modify and display their works or to authorize other people to do so. Moreover, their works are protected by copyright law from the very moment that they are created – regardless of whether they are registered with the Copyright Office and regardless of whether they are marked with a copyright notice or symbol (©). That means that virtually every e-mail message, Usenet posting, web page or other computer work you have ever created – or seen – is copyrighted. That also means that, if you are not the copyright owner of a particular e-mail message, Usenet posting, web page, or other computer work, you may not copy, distribute, modify or display it unless:

• Its copyright owner has given you permission to do so;
• It is in the “public domain;”
• Doing so would constitute “fair use;” or
• You have an “implied license” to do so.

If none of these exceptions applies, your use of the work constitutes copyright infringement and you could be liable for as much as $100,000 in damages for each use. In addition, if you reproduce or distribute copies of a copyrighted work having a total retail value of at least $1,000 (which could include, for example, posting a $50 software program on a web page or newsgroup from which it is downloaded 20 times), your actions may also be criminal – even if you do it for free. It’s usually easy to tell whether you have permission to make a particular use of a work – the copyright owner will have told you so expressly, either in writing or orally – but it’s not always so easy to tell whether the work is in the public domain or whether what you want to do constitutes fair use or is covered by an implied license.

Placing a work on the Internet is not the same thing as granting that work to the public domain. Generally speaking, a work is in the public domain only if (a) its creator has expressly disclaimed any copyright interest in the work, (b) it was created by the federal government, or (c) it is very old.

Unfortunately, just how old a particular work must be to be in the public domain depends in part upon when the work was created, in part upon whether and when it was formally published, in part upon whether and when its creator died, and in part on still other factors. Therefore, no one specific cutoff date exists to determine whether or not a work is in the public domain. As a rule of thumb, however, works that were created and published before 1923 are now in the public domain. Works that were created in or after 1923, works that were created before 1923 but published in or after 1923, and works that have never been published might be in the public domain, however, if you don’t know for sure, it’s best to assume that they are not.

In very general terms, a particular use of a work is “fair” if it involves only a relatively small portion of the work is for educational or other noncommercial purposes, and is unlikely to interfere with the copyright owner’s ability to market the original work. A classic example is quoting a few sentences or paragraphs of a book in a class paper. Other uses may also be fair, but it is almost never fair to use an entire work, and it is not enough that you aren’t charging anyone for your particular use. It also is not enough simply to cite your source (though it may be plagiarism if you don’t).

An implied license may exist if the copyright owner has acted in such a way that it is reasonable for you to assume that you may make a particular use. For example, if you are the moderator of a mailing list and someone sends you a message for that list, it’s reasonable to assume that you may post the message to the list, even if its author didn’t expressly say that you may do so. The copyright owner can always “revoke” an implied license simply by saying that further use is prohibited.

In addition, facts and ideas cannot be copyrighted. Copyright law protects only the expression of the creator’s idea – the specific words or notes or brushstrokes or computer code that the creator used – and to the underlying idea itself. Thus, for example, it is not copyright infringement to state in a history paper that the Declaration of Independence was actually signed on August 2, 1776, or to argue in an English paper that Francis Bacon is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, even though someone else has already done so, as long as you use your own words. Again, however, if you don’t cite your sources, it may still be plagiarism even if you paraphrase. Exactly how copyright law applies to the Internet is still not entirely clear, but there are some rules of thumb:

• You may look at another person’s web page, even though your computer makes a temporary copy when you do so, but you may not redistribute it or incorporate it into your own web page without permission, except as fair use may allow.
• You probably may quote all or part of another person’s Usenet or listserv message in your response to that message, unless the original message says that copying is prohibited.
• You probably may not copy and redistribute a private e-mail message you have received without the author’s permission, except as fair use may allow.
• You probably may print out a single copy of a web page or of a Usenet, listserv, or private email message for your own, personal, noncommercial use.
• You may not post another person’s book, article, graphic, image, music, or other such material on your web page or use them in your Usenet, listserv, or private e-mail messages without permission, except as fair use may allow.
• You may not download materials from Lexis-Nexis, the Clarinet news service, electronic databases from the Mabee Library, or other such services and copy or redistribute them without permission, unless the applicable license agreement expressly permits you to do so or unless your particular use would constitute fair use.
• You may not copy or redistribute software without permission, unless the applicable license agreement expressly permits you to do so.