Copyright is just as valid on the Internet as it is in the rest of the world. It is just easier to violate it. Keep that in mind when you find an interesting text online. Next time it could be your own text. Soon photographs, audio, and video will be just as easy to copy.

Basic copyright and copywrong

So far, when there are very few ways of protecting your copyright, two rhetorical questions have been asked: Why publish anything on the internet if you want to keep your copyright? Why publish anything if you do not want it to be public? But as business takes to the Internet and wants to make money, it has become more apparent that there is a need for ways to protect immaterial rights.

The purpose of copyright is both economical and moral. One should be able to make money from the things that one produces, and one should have the right to be recognised as the author of one's works. Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks of this.

The only exception from the laws is usually "fair use" (which is the U.S. term). This means for instance that it is allowed to quote parts of copyrighted works in a debate or in other works of art, and that copies can be made for some educational purposes which are specified.

Copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author. That applies in most of Europe, but in the United States that time limit is still 50 years. There are suggestions to change the U.S. law to 70 years, too. Since copyrighted material can be distributed over national borders there is the additional difficulty of which country's laws to use. It is up to each copyright holder to protect the copyright by filing lawsuits against copyright infringers.

More information on U.S. copyright can be found at the United States Copyright Office.

Journalistic implications

The existing copyright laws--for books, art and so on--do not actually have to be changed much, to include Internet publishing. However, one situation that was unforeseen in the old copyright laws is one that concerns journalists: Should the newspaper that buys articles from freelance journalists have the right to publish the articles not only in the paper edition but also on the web? At the moment this is undecided. Judges who rule in such cases keep saying that the law was not written with this in mind--and rule in favour of the newspapers. (See for example an article on this in Wired News.)

The search engine Northern Light has been criticized by freelance journalists who found their articles for sale there. Newspapers often sell articles to different archives without considering which articles were originally bought from freelancers. Northern Light says that it will remove any freelance article that publishers say have been wrongly included among articles sold, but for the freelance journalists themselves it is probably harder to get an article removed. It is important for freelancers to think about both re-sales and web publishing when they are negotiating for prices and terms.

The problem with database archives reselling articles that they have bought from publishers is not new, but with the Internet the articles are more accessible than before. In a recent article (accessible at Editor & Publisher), Steve Outing wrote: "Now, writers are seeing what's been happening to them all along; the practice of reselling content is more visible." This can also sum up the question of copyright on the Internet. Very little is altogether new, most of the problems were there already. The Internet often simply means one more way to find out that someone has been making copies of your work.

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