lecture 6: copyright

This and the next three slides discuss some important issues involved with publishing your site on the WWW. Last week, with our discussion of FTP programs, we considered the technical side of this: here, we think more about the non-technical side. All of this is covered in more detail in chapter 6 of the printed course booklet and it's recommended that you read that chapter as well.

There are two important legal issues you need to be aware of. One reason these are so important is that, for most people, publishing a web page will be their first experience of publishing anything in the public domain. Because it is so easy and inexpensive - remember that at Leeds, you do this simply by moving your pages into your www folder - people often do not realise that the act makes them immediately subject to the laws which cover published material. The two issues I will cover here are defamation, covered on the next slide, and copyright.

Copyright is something of a minefield precisely because the WWW has massively expanded the number of people who have the means to self-publish. I strongly recommend you look at the article (and some of the links) on http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html which answers some frequently-asked questions. This page is just a summary of the key ideas.

Copyright, expressed most simply, refers to the right of an author to be compensated for the use of their work. Authors retain copyright on their works for a period of 70 years after their death. Copyright also covers the use of images such as photographs. Also note the existence of other closely related forms of intellectual property such as trademarks and patents.

Technically, the use of any non-original material on your web site (or any other published work) could constitute a breach of copyright. However, if that were always followed through, no one would ever be able to do such things as publish academic works, which almost always depend on quoting the words of others. So various conventions have developed to make possible the normal development of ideas, principally the idea of "fair use", which is that the reproduction of small amounts of material is acceptable. (See the quoted article above.)

There are no hard-and-fast rules for determining fair use. On non-commercial sites, you will usually be safe as long as you place a reference to the source of the text or image (usually a hyperlink). Note, though, that there are some things which are regularly subjected to threats of action from the original owners of the copyright - two notable examples being any imagery from the TV show, The Simpsons, and the fixture lists of the English (and Scottish) football leagues. No matter how trivial the site, you simply cannot use these. On commercial sites, however, it is a very good idea to seek permission from the copyright owners before using any non-original material. The only exceptions to this are sites which advertise themselves as being the source of things like buttons, background images and so on. These will make it very clear whether you can freely use their images on your own site and even then may insist that you place a link back from your site to theirs. An example of this came two slides ago with the picture of the labyrinth.

Remember that this is not a one-way street. Your own site should be copyrighted, and you have the right to pursue anyone who violates that copyright should you wish it. (Of course, you might choose to make your site freely reproducible, or so-called "copyleft" - that's fine too.) I would make sure a copyright notice appears on at least the front page of your site.