Copyright Issues on the Web

Copyright Policy Site
Creating Student Web Pages
Creating Faculty Web Pages

Because the Web is brimming with freely available, easily copied information, even those who make the best of efforts to adhere to copyrights have difficulty. Yet, however difficult copyright issues are to understand and to apply, they are just as important on the web as they are when working with other media. One does not have to browse the Web long before seeing notes explaining that such-and-such a resource is no longer available because of a copyright complaint.

When creating pages for the Web, keep in mind that your pages will almost always be available to a world-wide audience. This means that whatever photographs you use, text you quote, or other media you put on the Web, may be viewed by millions of people. This is quite different from photocopying a page to hand out to a small class (already a tricky copyright issue).

Note: Faculty and academic staff can restrict access to pages. Contact your liaison for details.

A few very quick rules of thumb to use when creating Web pages:

• You can link to any Web page without permission from the owner, provided it is clear to those browsing the Web that they are linking to a different site.
• Before including any photos, text, or other materials created by anyone other than yourself, ask permission from whoever owns that material.
• Cite all your sources, and sign and date your pages.

For more information on Haverford's guidelines, read Fair Use and Faculty Multimedia Projects created by our library...or the library's quick Summary of Multimedia Fair Use Guidelines.

A number of Web sites deal with copyright issues. Here are a few that I found helpful:

United States Copyright Office

The official site of the United States government.

Copyright & Fair Use

Created by Stanford University Library, this web site provides links to information on current laws, pending copyright cases, and various Web sites with additional information.

This page provides information of interest to educators and others relating to copyright, including access to Copyright Resources for Education Online (CREDO), a database of original material developed by ILT (The Institute for Learning Technologies) for educators providing important basic information and useful tips on how to protect one's work and how to comply with the existing rules for the use others' copyrighted material.

The Copyright Website.

Created and maintained by intellectual property attorney Benedict O'Mahoney, this site gives you a wealth of easily accessible copyright information.

Web Law FAQ

Oppedahl & Larson is a law firm offering patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and other intellectual property services. They created this very readable discussion of copyright issues related specifically to the Web.