What every Webmaster Needs to Know about Copyright Law

Here is a piece on Copyright Law I wrote I thought some of you here at the Warrior Forum might find it useful. I went to law school, passed the bar and practiced law for five years, but this is not legal advice just a general coverage of the topic.

Copyright law is one area where webmasters can run into a lot of expensive problems. In short something is copyrighted when it first becomes fixed in a tangible medium. That is the technical definition. The more user friendly version is anytime you take a picture, make a video, audio recording or publish a line of text on your blog you have created a copyright and you are the holder of that copyright. The work doesn’t have to be commercial in nature or in other words your family vacation photos are copyrighted works.

Furthermore you should assume every image, every line of text, every audio and every video you run across online is copyrighted and not available for you to post on your blog as it was created by someone and fixed in tangible medium by them. If you post these materials to your blog you are infringing upon their rights.

But What about Public Domain
First off Public Domain works aren’t what you think they are. Public Domain works are for the most part works that are so old that their copyrights have expired. Public Domain works are not works you find on file sharing sites or even funny pictures you find on social media sites. In the last few years this is where a lot of problems have arisen. Just because someone creates a funny picture and posts it on FaceBook doesn’t mean that they have surrendered all their rights in that picture. It simply means they chose not to enforce those rights for FaceBook users. If you take that funny picture and post it on your blog they can sue you or at the very least send you a takedown notice (DMCA Notice) that will probably result in your web host taking your blog offline at least temporally. If the notice was sent to your domain registrar they very well could suspend you domain and charge you a bunch of fees for the hassle. However, it can be much worse than even that.

There are two Kinds of Copyrights
There are two kinds of copyrights. The first kind of copyright is the type we have been talking about namely whenever someone creates a work it is automatically copyrighted by them. The second type is when someone creates a work and then registers that work at the U.S. copyright office. If you post something to your blog that is a registered copyright you’re in deep doo doo. Not only will you have to take their work down, deal with your web host and maybe your domain registrar, but you may very well have to pay thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

With an unregistered work the copyright holder has to prove that he or she incurred actual damages. With a registered copyright the copyright holder doesn’t have to prove actual damages to get a monetary award. You also have to pay the registered copyright holder’s attorney’s fees so even if the copyright holder isn’t awarded a great deal of damages you may be liable for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees alone. Worse yet there is simply no legal defense to using a registered work.

If you use a registered copyright you are liable it is that simple. It is not a defense to claim your outsourced designer did it or you found the work in a place like Flicker as a creative commons work. You are still strictly liable. So be aware even if you are using what you thought was a creative commons work if the up loader of the work wasn’t the copyright holder of the work you are liable to the copyright holder. Simply not knowing is not a defense. You are also responsible for whatever existing work your designer incorporates into your design.

A Current Copyright Problem Area
Right now there is a real racket where people in the image licensing business share their work on social media and or file sharing sites. Eventually some poor webmaster runs across it and ends up putting it on their blog. Soon they get a demand letter notifying them of their infringement and it contains an offer of no further legal action if the webmaster will simply cut a check for $10,000 to the rightful copyright holder. Sadly if the copyright holder takes the webmaster to court the webmaster will very likely lose even if it was a set-up from the get go.

How to avoid copyright trouble
Unfortunately, the only sure way to avoid trouble is to create your own works for your blog or license all the images, video, audio or text you, your designer or staff uses on your blog. Short of that attribute everything. For example if you find a creative commons work that you want to use Attribute that image to it’s source. It is also very helpful to take a screen shot of where you obtained any image you end up using along with URL. While that might not be a defense against a registered copyright holder it might gain you some sympathy.