Introduction

Digital technology and electronic publishing have presented a number of issues in relation to intellectual property rights. These issues face us all, whether we publish on the Web, or just view pages in our browser. It is very difficult to regulate infringements of copyright in relation to the Web, and so ensuring awareness of acceptable use of the Internet is particularly important in order to ensure breaches do not take place, and that liability be minimised.

Copyright

Copyright is a means of protecting a persons intellectual property by ensuring that other people do not copy or adapt the material. Copyright protection comes into being when the material is created. A copyright statement is not required in order for a work to be covered by copyright, so just because there is no copyright statement this does not mean that no copyright is held. All kinds of items and mediums are protected by copyright, even electronic resources including:

Literary Works

Any original written work eg. novels, poetry, letters, directories, the lyrics of musical works; and so Web pages, email messages, news bulletins etc. will all be examples of literary works protected by copyright. Computer programs are also protected as a literary work

Dramatic Works

Dramatic works are distinguished from literary works by the inclusion of spoken words, or described actions.

Artistic Works

Includes photographs, sculptures, maps, plans etc. All pictures, images, logos and other graphics on the Web will be protected as artistic works.
Sound Recordings
All sound recordings are protected by copyright.

Films

Moving images and video clips are protected as films.

It should be clear that in any one Web page there may be many different copyrights for the text, pictures, icons and sounds. Copyright is theoretically owned by the creator of the work, be it a literary work, a musical work, a dramatic work etc. But if the creator is an employee, and the works were created in the course of employment, the copyright will belong with the employer. This becomes far more problematic when there is joint ownership of works, which is of course very common with Web sites.

Ownership of copyright can, like any other property, be sold or assigned, and may therefore change hands after its initial creation. The copyright of published articles may well be held by the publisher not the author. Different types of works have different lengths of copyright protection. Literary, Dramatic and Musical works have protection for 70 years after the death of an author.
There is no definitive legal position concerning electronic copying and its relation to copyright on the Internet.
However, it is accepted that information on the Internet is protected by copyright, and a work in electronic form on your screen should not be copied any more than a printed work. Unless specific permission is given on a Web page, the work should not be copied without prior permission from the publisher of that material. You should never make multiple copies of a document unless permission is given on the page(s).

When putting something on the Internet, you should check carefully that you own copyright, bearing in mind that you can't always tell if copyright is breached. Do not scan pictures without checking who holds the copyright, or use video or audio clips without permission.

Fair Dealing

The "fair dealing" provision of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the copying of a limited amount from a book, periodical or similar publication for research and private study. There is no specified amount for electronic copies however, and so as a rule of thumb you should consider whether you would feel the amount you are copying would be acceptable if this was your own work.

Copying from the Internet

In the main, people who distribute material via the Internet do so because they want its massive readership to access their work. However, by the very nature of such distribution, they can also expect that their material will be downloaded, copied and used in some way. Nevertheless, it is still copyright material and if you copy more than 'an insubstantial amount' for purposes other than those quoted in the 'exceptions' for printed material ie other than for research or private study, criticism or review, reporting of current events, then the rights holders are entitled to seek recompense if they can prove that their income has been significantly affected by your copying.
So what should you do when you find information on the World Wide Web that you want to copy? Even before you consider downloading and printing a page, let alone copying it for any other purpose, you should attempt to locate a copyright and/or usage statement from the author or publisher associated with that page. In the case of a Web site this might be on the site's home page or viewed on another page via a link.
If there is no statement, or the purpose for which you want the material is not listed as being permitted, then you will have to seek the permission of the site owner or the author to use the material. Most sites will provide an email address for contact.
You should bear in mind that the person who placed the material on the Internet might not have had any rights to do so in the first place, and that in copying and re-distributing the material you might well be opening yourself up to action being taken by the actual rights holders.

Areas to consider:

Browsers, Proxy Servers and Caches

The current legislation means that by viewing a page in your browser you are in actual fact making a transient copy of the document and so are infringing copyright. But in the current context such an argument is untenable. Also caches which store pages or page elements viewed in browsers in order to improve performance, may well be guilty of infringement.

Copying from an e-Journal, online database or CD-ROM

Access to, and use of,, this kind of material is almost always governed by a licence granted as part of a contract between the supplier and you the user or the organisation you use for access.
The licence is usually pretty clear as to how much you can copy (or download), the purposes for which you can do that copying, and for what you can and cannot subsequently use the material. The systematic downloading of individual sections of, for example, a database in order that you can build your own equivalent is (usually) expressly forbidden in such licences. The terms and conditions of the licence will vary from product to product, and you are strongly advised to read the relevant licence or online advice about the product before attempting to copy any of the material you are accessing.

Domain names

These are also covered by copyright laws. Domain names can be registered under the Internic registry (.com, .net and .org) or one of more than 200 registries around the world. Approximately 80 of these will take registrations from anyone without expecting anything other than an understanding of their registry system and payment of fees. "The only thing that stops individuals or companies registering domains in these 80 countries is the knowledge that they'll infringe other's brand names. However, many other registries have specific rules - those in France, for example, insist that companies are officially registered in France and that the domain name exactly matches the company name, acronym or trademark. Someone with a legitimate name, such as William Harold Smith, could still obtain the domain name of, say, well-known chain store whsmith.co.uk. However, you can not get away with buying the domain names of popular companies and trying to sell these back to them.

Frames

When using frames, take care not to load into your frames material / work to which you / your institution does not own copyright.

Hypertext links

The legality of hypertext links is still developing, but although you are not actually copying material by hyper linking you may be authorising another user to copy the material to which you are linking, especially if the owner of the linked page is unclear. Links should be considered carefully, and if possible permission to establish a link should be requested by the page or site owner/webmaster. As a general rule of thumb, if linking out to other pages, check that the author is identified on that work. It is also best to link to a home page, rather than deeper into a site where ownership may be unclear and navigation to the Homepage may be difficult.

Illustrations on Web pages

Most web pages contain images of some sort or another. It should be noted that there are two sets of separate copyright rights in the text and the image, and they could be assigned to two different people or organisations. The publisher of the web site might be using an image obtained from elsewhere (with or without permission!) and you need to be aware of who owns the copyright on that as well and obtain the appropriate permission to copy it for your purposes.

Liability

A third party will be liable for illegality (whether it is copyright infringement, defamation, race hate material, pornography or whatever) on the Internet as long as two things apply. The first is that the third party knew, or had good reason to know, that something illegal was going on. The second is that the third party could control what was being put on. The third party could be an employer, an Internet Service provider, a portal, a subject gateway, an electronic publisher, etc. In addition, the originator of the illegality (a student, an author, etc.) is always liable, but if he or she is (say) a student, the legal action is more likely to be targeted at the third party as it is likely to have more cash to pay in damages

This prevents the download of text, music files (including MP3 files) or pictures. No transcripts of scripts, sound recordings, screen grabs from videos or TV broadcasts, official show logos, written or photographic material from the video sleeve or inlay card, or photographs should be scanned in from publications. The only way you can be safe from prosecution is to get permission from the copyright holder or remove the material. You should also avoid linking to other Web sites without getting their consent.

Liability is extremely strict, and encouraging or authorising someone to infringe copyright, even if you didn't know, is an infringement in itself. The service provider or institution may be found liable for supplying the use of the equipment.
Criminal Liability, which can attract fines and 2 year jail sentences may be a result of copyright infringements, as well as infringements of the Data Protection Act.

Civil Liability may also occur as a result of copyright, particularly of obscene publications. There are two dangers with regard to civil case; with vicarious liability the employer is liable for the acts of employees carried out during employment, and with direct liability, the organisation or institution may be seen as acting as publisher, and hence held accountable.

Linking

If you are copying the material because you want to include it in a web site of your own, rather than try to copy the material you should consider simply quoting the appropriate URL or linking to it and letting your readers consult the source material online. You should draw their attention to any copyright notice on that site, and (if possible or appropriate) direct them to the home page or the page with the copyright and/or usage statement on it first
So far, it is held that creating links to other web sites is not covered, but it would be highly dubious if a link was disguised to make the connected page seem a part of your own site (='passing off') or to a site that the person linked to did not approve of, or mis used their work in a way not intended.

As a rule, simple linking is legal, but the use of frames to contain linked content should only be carried out with the express permission of the owner of the framed materials. Even if the link is legal, it is prudent to approach the owner of the linked URL if there is any likelihood that the link would violate any reasonable expectation of privacy or income. It is advisable to have some sort of statement on your web page saying in effect that when the user follows the link to another site, the page they are going to will be copyright of someone else and that the user should read the copyright statement on the target page. If you feel that you must link to an individual page ('deep-linking' as it is known) then you should warn your reader that the target page has copyright associated with it and that they should check out the copyright permissions for the site itself before doing anything else (other than viewing) the target page.

Consent, therefore, should be requested (and you should not link if the request is refused or if there is no answer) when: the link falsely implies an affiliation between sites (for example, "click here to reach our partners", and the link includes an organisation that is not a partner); the link uses the trademark or logo of the linked site (link by a company name rather than by using its trade marks); linking to a page other than a home page in circumvention of the linked site's preventive measures; the linked site requests or requires consent; the linking site diverts advertising revenue from the linked site; or the linking is likely to offend current norms of acceptable behaviour.

Plagiarism

If you do intend to include anybody else's work within your own, you are strongly advised to clearly indicate which is which, acknowledge the source (and include a permission statement if you have obtained it) and keep the portion to a minimum. Infringing copyright might not result in major economic loss, but you might lose your reputation if you carry out plagiarism.

Re-using material for non-Web purposes

If you are copying material for purposes other than re-publishing on the Web, eg for inclusion in a PowerPoint presentation, incorporation in a written text etc, then again you are advised to seek the permission of the copyright holder. The best course of action is to work out what you want to re-use, and then email or otherwise contact the rights holder and explain how much you want to re-use and for what purpose. The fact that people are publishing on the web indicates that they want a wide-scale distribution of their material, so you might find that they are very willing to give you permission to re-use some of it as long as you give them appropriate credit.
There is no 'percentage' guideline. If the amount of the original that is incorporated could be defended as 'insubstantial' and not likely to cause material loss to the rights holder, then you could possibly claim 'copying for fair-dealing' for 'criticism or review', but this would be a matter that might only be settled in court!

Scanning printed material for use electronically

Scanning of copyright material should be regarded exactly the same as photocopying and the same limits to copying and restrictions on use apply. In particular, you should not scan and print or re-publish material in electronic form unless you have been given permission by the rights holders to do so. Even if you have had permission (and possibly paid fees) to produce multiple hard copies, you must seek separate permission to scan and disseminate an electronic version.
This is particularly important when scanning images. As with written works, illustrations, photographs and other artistic works are copyright for seventy years from the death of the person who produced the work. To reproduce the images you must get the permission of the copyright owner who might be the originator (for example - photographer), the person who employed them to produce the image, a 'picture library' or the publisher of the works in which they appear.

The ability to incorporate video clips into a web page has introduced another aspect of copyright into the area of electronic publication. Unless the clip is incorporated into teaching material that forms part of a course which deals with the making of films or film sound tracks, then you will need to get permission from the copyright holders to include it. The copyright expires seventy years after the death of the last to die of the following: the principal director, the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue or the composer of the music created for and used in the film. However, in practice the copyright holder will be the producer or the production company that made the film, and permission should be sought from them to include the clip.