Who Owns It?

Now that you have become adept at finding things on the Web, an important question is that of ownership and copyright: what things on the Web may be freely downloaded and what things may not be, at least not without restrictions? For Web users in the K-12 environment this is of double importance: not only should you be aware of personal legal liabilities, you also are generally influencing the attitudes of students toward these issues, which may have much larger implications than your personal legal exposure.

Copyright Law

The question of what you may legitimately download can be a very sticky one. In some cases it it simple: clearly trademarked commercial logos (e.g., the Golden Arches) are likely to be protected by trademark law and an army of corporate lawyers. At the other extreme are tutorials like the one you are using now, for which the authors have given explicit permission for you to use it as you would like (subject to some broad restrictions).

Of course, even in the above "clear-cut" situations things may still be murky. For example, someone may give you permission to copy something from their page when they do not have the authority to do so. If they insert someone's corporate logo on their page and then give you permission to copy it, they may have violated copyright or trademark law in placing the image there to begin with. This example illustrates two important principles:

  1. Just because something appears on the Internet does not mean that it is legal for you to copy it.

  2. The law generally holds that it is YOUR responsibility to determine the legality of copying something, irrespective of whether the source from which you copy it has broken the law or not.
A related point to bear in mind is that when, as in the case of the Tutorial, someone gives you permission to use their material, this permission does not extend to material that may be accessed by a link from the original material. The question of how material accessed in an external link may be used clearly must be put to ITS owner.

Notice carefully the distinction: you may usually insert a link to someone else's Web material in your pages without restriction; the issue of ownership becomes important only when you attempt to download material (text, images, movies, . . .) from other Web sites and incorporate it directly into your Web material.

More Information

Here are some links to more extensive discussions of copyright and trademark law: You are well advised to look at this material if you intend to download and use significant amounts of material from the Web.

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