Plaguirism & Copyright

[riley454]

What laws cover the re-use/revamping of other sites into your own, and does anyone police it?

Now that I'm fairly competent and confident with web design, I've found some prosperous sites that offer high commissions for referred customers who sign up and spend $$$. I feel I can build a quality site that can provide a bit of extra money through paying referrals, but requires quite a lot of pages with a lot of extensive text that would be extremely time consuming to research and write from scratch.

I seriously don't want my site to be regarded as questionable because it uses content from other sites(and certainly don't want to fall foul of the law), so my first question relates to copying bulk blocks of text from various other sites into my own site.

-If I DO use text from other sites, do I have to quote and state where the text came from?
-If so, is simply quoting and stating where the text came from sufficient?
-If that's not acceptable and I choose to re-word a few lines/words throughout the text technically/legally/morally unsatisfactory?
-Do normal copyright laws apply on the internet?
-If so, How do I familiarise myself with worldwide copyright laws?
-And if I get it wrong, who can sue, and from where, and what are the likely consequences?

 

[zkiller]

all content on the internet falls under US intellectual copyright laws. as such it is prohibited to copy said content without consent from the owner.

personally, i find it bad practice anyways. your best bet for attracting large groups of visitors is fresh unique content. i realize that it can be time consuming, but who said anything worthwhile is easy.

 

[alloydog]

I'm by no means any sort of legal expert, but I have looked into this for another forum and for my own use...

-If I DO use text from other sites, do I have to quote and state where the text came from?

It depends on the amount of text/content from the other site - a few lines, probably not, but if its a paragraph of several lines and without it your work would be meaningless, then it is customary to quote the source material.
Informing the source that you are using their work is also polite.
Just do not try to pass it off as your own work.

-If so, is simply quoting and stating where the text came from sufficient?

Yes, but adding links is courteous.

-If that's not acceptable and I choose to re-word a few lines/words throughout the text technically/legally/morally unsatisfactory?

If the information is available from more than one source, say Wikipidea, then you can probably claim it is 'public knowledge'. But again, it is good practice to declare the reference.

-Do normal copyright laws apply on the internet?

Yes.

-If so, How do I familiarise myself with worldwide copyright laws?

Under the Berne Convention, copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Berne Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.

Link to full text: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
Wikipedia article: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

-And if I get it wrong, who can sue, and from where, and what are the likely consequences?

It depends, from what I have read, in most cases you will get a 'cease and remove' type letter/email. If you still publish the copyrighted material, then legal action may follow. If the source site is in the US, and you are in the UK, they can still get you through the UK legal system.

Personally, I always try to contact the content/copyright owner for material I use.

As well as actually trying to get permission to use others work, I also post the following notice:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© COPYRIGHT NOTICE ©
Where possible, for all artwork and information, the author/artist has been contacted for permission to use their work. Where no acknowledgement or copyright notice is given, the work is either original to the site author or the original author/artist could not be traced. If you have any information regarding unacknowledged work reproduced on this page, please contact me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

It at least shows you have tried to get permission, and to date no one has ever asked me to remove their work.

All the people I have contacted have been quite happy to let me reproduce their work, even if it has had commercial value. When I ask, I explain I will clearly state who owns the copyright, and offer to link back to any site they want.