Using Copyrighted Material

Previously, I explained some of the areas of concern regarding the copyright of one’s own website, but there is another important facet of copyright that you should consider. Excluding social media sites, the expectation for a website is that the content belongs to the website owner. While there are certain exceptions, this is usually the case.

Both website owners and web hosting companies need to be aware of the copyright laws of the countries where they do business. There have been notable news stories surrounding copyright infringement of music and movies, where web hosts were required to shut down the servers of file sharing sites and hand over their hard drives.

The general rule is that if a copyright notice is displayed, you cannot use content from someone else without permission. If no copyright notice is displayed, you should assume that the work is copyrighted and still avoid using it. The exceptions are works released to the Public Domain, under a Creative Commons licensed, or with some other license that permits reuse and redistribution.

Photo Source: Flickr