Many newcomers to the Internet perceive it as a lawless space where communication is ungoverned and anything goes. This assumption is NOT true, and gets even less so every day. Through misunderstanding, ignorance or design - thousands of people break copyright laws on the Internet every day. Copyright laws that are followed by people in the real world are mistakenly considered inapplicable online.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that if a work has no copyright notice, it is not copyrighted - meaning you can email, post, use or copy anything you find. The fact is that every communication (words, photos, music or art) produced after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted by default. To be safe, assume everything you see on the Internet is protected unless otherwise specified by the author.

Another common myth is that as long as you don’t use the copyrighted material for commercial purposes you are not breaking any laws. This is false.

The relative newness of the Internet as a medium and sheer volume of people breaking the rules means that you will probably get away with minor breaches of these laws unnoticed or unchallenged. However, this situation will not persist as is evidenced by the increasing cases of litigation against those who hope to profit from this confusion (e.g Napster). Be careful that anything you use for your business (photos and content) is not protected.

So basically, if you’re using any material that was produced by anyone else - send an email asking for permission just to be safe.

Next month... International paper sizes