Copyright protection

This post is a direct result of some discussions I had with Thilak over at TechBuzz. There was an incident of plagiarism by a person, and Thilak could, after some effort get a public apology. And later, we had some discussion over at another thread of his, where a harmless looking picture of Bart Simpson was used.

Copyright protection applies from the time the work was created in a fixed form. The work may be literary, music, video, artwork and other intellectual works. The copyright applies even if the © symbol is displayed or not along with the work. The copyright give the owner of the work exclusive rights over it. No one can use the work, without express permission from the owner.

The only limitation of the copyright would be the 'fair use' clause. The use of such work for critisism, news reporting, teaching, research or similar purposes would not be constituted as copyright infringement. A particular use, can be judged as a 'fair use' or not by the following point of views:

• the purpose is for commercial or non-profit
• the amount of copyrighted work used
• the effect of use on the (potential) market value of the copyrighted work

That means, we are not allowed to use those images of our favorite cartoon characters in our blogs, or websites, if we are not specifically writing about it. That would also mean that the numerous galleries of actors and actresses would need to get written permission from the photographers or studios, in order to be legal websites.

It may sound harsh on the numerous blog publishers and website hobbyists, but that is the nature of copyrighted works. To go against these, stating that one does not make 'significant' revenue, would be against the ethics. A clear understanding on the implication would arise if one were to go into the shoes of such writers, artists, photographers, or any other 'intellectual property creators'.

There are other kinds of works that can be derived upon - that can be used for various purposes. Such licenses range from rights of attribution to public domain licenses. Look out for write ups on this issue in coming days.