The Web gives us access to a wealth of free information but that doesn’t mean that everything is free for the taking. If someone else’s graphic, site code or copy is used without the copyright owner’s permission, then that is theft, and the user risks unwanted attention from the owner’s lawyer.
“A copyright is a form of intellectual property which secures to its holder
the exclusive right to produce copies of his or her works of
original expression, such as a literary work, movie, musical work
or sound recording, painting, photograph, computer program,
or industrial design, for a defined, yet extendable, period of time.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
The copyright owner does not necessarily need to be the creator of the work. The website owner may also not own the copyright and may only be licensed to use the material for a period of time. This scenario can apply to photographs, where a user may be granted a license to use or display an image on their site, whilst the photographer retains the copyright - even if the image is of the site owner’s product. For more on this topic visit the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers (NZIPP) website.
Copyright is subject to a defined, but extendable, period of time, during which, the copyright owners are not bound to use the material if they so choose. Once the statuary period is over, the work enters the public domain and is available for anyone to use. Generally this happens when all of the following occurs in relation to the work or invention:
- The work was created and first published before January 1st, 1923, or at least 95 years before January 1st of the current year, whichever is later.
- The last surviving author died at least 70 years before January 1st of the current year.
- No Berne Convention signatory has passed a perpetual copyright on the work.
- Neither the United States nor the European Union has passed a copyright term extension since these conditions were last updated.
These circumstances differ from a trademark, which can expire as soon as it becomes a generic term. For example many of us will be familiar with the term ‘Waratah’ when used to refer to a metal fence standard. This word has become synonymous with ‘fence post’ so it can be argued that it can be used without fear of unauthorised trademark use.
And remember, just because an image is found in Google Images does not mean it is freely available for anyone to use! Google Images is an index of images on websites it has crawled that match particular search terms - it is not a free to use image gallery.
“Copyrights do not cover ideas or facts, only the particular expressions of such.” www.wikipedia.org
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