What is copyright?

A law (or set of laws) that protects creators of intellectual property

What is intellectual property?

Almost anything created through a creative or intellectual process

What can be copyrighted?

Tangible forms of intellectual property (not ideas or concepts)

Protects the creator/owner
         Focus is on protecting financial gains

Only the copyright holder can:

• Reproduce the material

• Create derivative works

• Distribute or copy the work

• Perform the work

• Exhibit or control who exhibits the work

How you can lose your copyrights:

• Sell them to someone else

• Create the work using the resources of your employer (including time)

• Sign a “work-for-hire”contract

• Voluntarily put work “in the public domain”

Can I use copyrighted materials?

yes, if the intent falls under "Fair Use":

Provides for exceptions to the copyright restrictions in selected cases

• for non-profit educational purposes

• in a parody of another work

• to critique the work itself

• as part of research or scholarship

• purely for your own use and doesn't impact the income of the creator

• not a substantial enough portion of the whole to impact the income of the creator

yes, if you obtain permission from copyright owner

Written works

• Contact publisher and/or author, may pay royalties

• Use an intermediary agency such as http://www.copyright.com/

  Music

• Licensing agencies (e.g. BMI and ASCAP)

Film/Video

• May need to obtain rights from distribution company, writer, producer, director, and/or one or more actors

• Use a specialized law firm

Licensed Collections

An alternative to chasing down rights is to purchase “royalty free” collections

• Clip Art

• Stock Photography

• “Buyout” Music and/or Sound Effects

• Stock Footage

Sample Stock Sites:

• Photos: http://www.corbis.com/

• “Buyout Music” http://www.musicbakery.com/

• Stock Travel Footage http://www.seavid.com/stockFLA.html

• Historic/Archival footage http://www.wpafilmlibrary.com/

 

Copyright vs. Plagiarism

• Copyright governs your legal right to use materials created by another, particularly if income is involved

• Plagiarism governs your ethical responsibility to provide credit to the original author or creator of a work

1909 to 1978 (pre-1923: public domain)

• works required copyright notice

• copyright period of 28 to 150 years from registration

1978 to 1989

• works required copyright notice

• copyright for individuals lasts 50 years from death of creator

• copyright for corporations lasts 75 years from registration

1989-1998 (The Berne Convention)

• copyright notice optional (works copyrighted when created)

• copyright term lengths the same

1999-present (Digital Millennium Copyright Act/Term Ext)

• copyright protection extended an additional 20 years

• additional protections for digital material, and for ISPs

Copyright information
How does Napster Work

• Biggest Civil Rights legislation since 1964
• ADA has caused more legislation that specifically applies to web development

• In 1997  the WWW consortium (W3C) set out to make the WWW more accessible for individuals with disabilities

Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, Section 508

Effects Federal Agencies development of technology after August 2000

•  When they "develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology" it must be accessible to federal employees with disabilities.
• When a member of the public who has a disability must be able to gain access to the information or services offered by each agency.

WAI involved in developing techniques, a checklist and  Authoring Tool Guidelines.  for making web content accessible

HTML can be tested on a textbase web browser such as Lynx to prove it is accessible.

More on Web Accessible web pages and Universal Design (UD)

A Primer for Accessible Web Pages
CAST

• HTML - HyperText Markup Language
• XML - Extensible Markup Language
• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
• DOM - Document Object Model
• XHTML - Estensible HTML
• JavaScript
• Java

Who is involved

• W3C - World Wide Web Consortium  that includes Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Netscape, etc
• WaSP - Web Standards Project - Grassroots coalition
• ECMA International - European Computers Manufacturing Association

What is the Advantage?

• Accessibility
  • For people
  • For Software Developers
• Stability - forward/backward compatibility

How Compliant are browsers?

Browser Support Chart

How can I tell if I am compliant with the current standard?

HTML Validation (W3C)
CSS Validator (W3C)