Home Page Copyright Home Page CopyrightFirst, there is the Berne Convention which is an agreement between
several countries to support each other in intellectual property
issues. The Berne Convention was created in 1971. Although the
US was one of the original parties in hammering this convention
out, our congress did not agree to support it until 1989.
Basically what the Berne Convention says is that if something
is copyrighted in a country that subscribes to the Berne Convention,
anyone in the Berne Union (countries that subscribe to the Berne
Convention) will support that copyright.
Litigation procedures in copyright infringment are not completely spelled
out here.
Basically if country that the web page was created or published in
requires copyright registration, that must be completed. Otherwise,
as in the US, something can be copyright just by declaring it so.
However, the product must be registered before filing litigation.
Some other general items that I found relating to this are:
There is some discussion about whether something transmitted across
the net is a copy of the original or a "performance" similar to the
performance of a play. It appears that this hasn't been tested in court
yet. If a web page is actually a performance, then the "fair use"
claims lose most of their claim.
One other site did make the comment that unless something had
a copyright label, it became public domain when placed upon the
net. Although "placed on the net" was not defined, I would assume
that it is available for public access. Thus any mail list that
offers archives is publically accessible and thus public domain.
Also, any web server that answers all requests would be equivelent.
As for the person/people showing home pages at seminars, if web pages
are a performance a performance, and direct or indirect admission was charged
for the seminar, the copyright has been violated even when there wasn't
"any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage" unless the
procedes went to an educational, religious or charitable purpose.
Everything that I found is highly legalistic (ie exceptions for exceptions).
It is only legal where both the author and copier are in or are
citizens of a Berne Union country. I could only find references
to 17 countries that were officially part of the Berne Union. You
will need to request Circular 38a from the Copyright office to
get the current list. I couldn't find this on the Net. Since there
are over 100 countries on the net.
I am not a lawyer. All of the above is my interpretation of what I have
read. If you want to do the research for yourself,
let me know and I will send you pointers to the info that I picked up.
FYI - the total size of the documents that I picked up are abou 1.5 M
of TEXT, so be prepared to read...
My ammended suggestion for standard practice is as follows:
It is good practice to put a copyright link in for web pages that spell out
the permissible useage of the web page.
For people reproducing web pages, I propose:
If the page has no copyright, assume that it is public domain.
If the page has a copyright indicator and no useage, the page is not
useable without explicit permission from the owner.
If the page has a copyright indicator and link, the permissable usage
is spelled out there. Whatever is not explicitly permitted is forbidden.
I wouldn't assume that copyright apply to everyone everywhere in the world,
and if you really want to do some fancy protection, get a list of the
countries that are members of the Berne Union and restrict access to
your pages for the countries that are not members of the Berne Union
if your copyright protection is that important.
Mary