Monday, November 29, 2010 @ 12:37 AM
Question 4: Is web content protected by copyright laws or can it be considered as public domain information?
Copyright is a form of protection that used to protect the authors of ‘original works of authorship, such as literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works’. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works, regardless of the nationally and domicile of the author. If anyone is violate any of the rights that provided by copyrighted law to the owner of the copyright is considered as unlawful (Copyright.com, 2010). The one who are break the copyright law is because of the people are copy others works without permission of others, so called plagiarism. Formally, plagiarism is defined as quoting text from another author without indicia of quotation and a proper bibliographic citation. To do a proper bibliographic citation, it must contain the author’s name and enough information about the source of information, so that the reader can always refer back to the original text. For the citation from a webpage, the author’s name and the address of the webpage must be provided (Ronald B. Standler, 1997).
Public domain can be defined as consisting of works that are ineligible for copyright protection or the work which are hold an expired copyrights. Besides, it also refers to the total absence of copyright protection for work, means that the information that referred to as intellectual property that are not owned or controlled by anyone. There are no any permission is needed to copy or use the public domain works, it is available for anyone to use it for any purpose. Besides, public domain works can also be copied and distributed without any permission or paying royalties. Works become part of the public domain when the author placed its works in the public domain, and more common is the expiration of the copyrightor work is not owned by original author, when the work reach a certain age, or the author does not renew their copyright. Instead of that, the works that were created before the copyright law are considered as public domain as well (Dusan Bicanski, 2009).
Next, we will discuss about is the web content protected by copyright laws or can it be considered as public domain information. Basically, the content in the web can be belong to copyright law and public domain, it is just according to the author whether have they go and apply the copyright or not. Once a people post something online, they can decide whether they want to apply a copyright so that others cannot copy their works or they can open their woks as public domain so that others can use and copy it without permission. The process of applying a copyright for your article is very easy, following are the few step to complete it.
Firstly, author need to proceed to the United States Copyright Office webpage to download the Form CO. The form totally have eight pages , in the first page, author need to place an “X” on the box representing the work that he wants to copyright in section, then place the work’s title in the big box. If they’re copyrighting a series of works, they need to list down their work’s volume, number, issue, ISSN, and frequency of publication. Next, they need to fill up another title if there are any. Besides, the year that they completed their work and the publication information is needed when they fill up the form
After that, when they are move to page two, they need to provide their personal or business information such as author’s birth year, their citizenship, residency and contribution information. Instead of that, they also need to place the creator’s mode of cooperation and specify what the author contributed. If they are applying for a copyright for another person, they need to repeat this step in page three.
Next page, page four, is to identify what material isn’t going to be a part of the copyright application to list their registrations and also to list additional items that are to be covered by copyright; this is if you’re applying for a previously copyrighted work that has new material in it. Then, page five is to identify the person that’ll grant the rights for others to use the copyrighted material.
Complete page six with provide point of contact information for the person that’ll receive mail and communication related to the copyright application. Designate who’s going to receive the copyright certificate, then place their information in page seven. Provide signature in page eight to certify that this application contains truthful information (eHow Contributor, 2008). With complete all these eight pages of form, the process of apply a copyright is completed.
As a conclusion, the content of the web is protected by the copyright law if the author had applied the copyright for their works and in the other hands, their works will be belong to public domain and public can view, use or copy their works without any permission. To determined whether the article have the copyright or not, public can identify from few things, which is the symbol © (the letter C in a circle), the word “Copyright” or the abbreviation “Copr.”, the year when the work was first created, and the name of the owner of the copyright. Example of a copyrighted works is © 2005 John Doe (Copyright.com, 2005). Public should able to identify whether the article is being protected by copyright law or not before they use other’s works.
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