Congratulations – you have a blog now and you are ready to start writing, creating, sharing and networking! Yet, all the fun may be intertwined with the risk of legal liability – think take down letters, complaints and infringement claims. Not a funny side of blogging, I know.
Let’s look at blogging from several legal perspectives:
- Part One will focus on what bloggers should do or avoid doing in order to stay away from legal liability when using materials created by others;
- Part Two will explore the various ways to protect your creative works and rights when blogging;
- And in Part Three, we will go into further aspects a blogger may encounter legal liability or just mere communication problems, e.g. defamation, illegal processing of personal data, using third party blog tools, etc.
© nito /Dollar Photo Club
Copyright means “I can copy it”, right?
Actually, copyright means that once you are the original author or copyright holder of a creative work that is fixed in a tangible medium (e.g. paper, online, etc.), you have the exclusive right to use it (sell, make copies, publish, etc.), and to prevent others from using it without your permission. Plus, in most cases, you can demand payment for use.
Unlike trademarks and patents, copyright is granted the moment the work is created and fixed. For example, if the blogger only thought about the blog post in their mind, this obviously would not be enough for copyright protection, but once the article is written in a computer file or posted online, as long as it is original and creative, it becomes a work protected by copyright, without the need to register it anywhere. Same applies to all creative works – pictures, graphics, music, videos, etc.
Therefore, from a legal perspective, no © symbol, nor any designation of copyright protection is further needed for the material to be protected (yet, it is a good idea to use those symbols so that the users are informed about your copyright). Only works that are in the public domain could be used freely without their author`s permission.
To read the full article, check Chicoverdose where it was originally published.