Copying the copy
Copying the copyHowdy. Hope you had a good weekend.
Interesting day today. Just happened to find a couple of sites that have ripped off either my web site copy or graphics. I hadn't really considered the ramifications before, but when web site copy is copied then it can have pretty serious consequences.
It's prompted me to write a new article titled "Why a web developer should NOT assign copyright for design or content on a web site". Hope it is of some interest to any web designers, graphic artists or Search Engine experts out there.
And just to make you jealous, below is the view of the beach a couple of minutes up the road. I had my morning coffee right where I took the shot (click on the photo for a larger version - it's only 48 kb) - just a beautiful, beautiful place.
It's a place called Burleigh Point for all of those keen Australian surfers out there.
The magnificent view from where I had my morning coffee
Have a good day.
Cheers
Brendon
[ comments ]
I read your article about the copyright issue. I was wondering what you decided to do. Did you contact the person responsible for stealing the content? Did you contact your client? I've had similar problems in the past, where a simple e-mail solves all the problems.
I have no knowledge of how Australian copyright law differs from that of the U.S., but I am reasonably confident that copyright restrictions wouldn't apply to the kind of keyword phrases you would use for search engine optimization because they are short, generic phrases.
As an example, in many cases you probably optimize your websites for keywords that other websites are optimized for as well. And that is fine, so long as you don't use their content.
If a business's name is one of the keywords, then that might be their trademark, of course, but you wouldn't ever be optimizing business B's website for business's A's trademark.
So then it comes down to a matter of being able to enforce copyright restrictions in the case of an infringement. If your working with the client of the website that has been copied on an ongoing basis, would there be any reason you couldn't just bring it to your client's attention and have them sign a form giving you the legal power to pursue the matter? And if your no longer working with the client, then it doesn't really impact you directly (unless they copied your business name, or another one of your trademarks).
One area where I do see a strong reason not to assign copyright in its entirety to your client is for web-based programming. Tons of code can be reused between any two web-based applications if they are written well, and it would be a big problem for me if I couldn't reuse any of my work on previous projects.
The cost for me to do that work would skyrocket, and I don't even know if it would be possible for me to do it anymore because I'd just be recoding the same common parts over again (which may be infringement anyway, even if I'm not looking at or reusing old code).
As a result, for code I assign joint copyright for code. They can do whatever they want with it, as can I. For everything else (design, copy, etc.) I assign full copyright and intend to handle it like I described above if an infringement issue ever occurs.
Regards,
Bryan Helmkamp