Copyright question..

[Alexis Wilke]

Ah! One more thing... Don't even consider using a brand "the wrong way".

[ChickenFreak]

Originally Posted by Alexis Wilke

The truth be told... Anything on the Internet that is publicly available is, by law, considered to be in the public domain. Most people are playing games with "I own this" and "I own that", but that's how it is. This being said, if you do not exactly know how to prove that everything is public domain, then you better follow the rules.

Sorry, Alexis, but you are entirely incorrect in this. It's a common rumor, but it's not true. Copyright holds on the Internet just as it does anywhere else. The fact that it's "publicly available" doesn't change that fact, any more than the fact that television broadcasts or music on the radio are publicly available changes the fact that that material is copyrighted. The rights of publication and public performance are some of the rights that are granted to the copyright holder - if exercising those rights invalidated one's copyright, those rights wouldn't be worth much.

Yes, many news stories are published on many different outlets. That's because they're published through a syndication service, or some other structure that permits participating members to reuse the material. And many of of those "scraping" sites that grab people's articles and publish them without permission are quite simply violating copyright.

I have seen people argue that by turning on an RSS feed on your blog, you're consenting to have your content scraped; I'm confident that that argument would lose in court, but it is nevertheless an argument made _within_ the copyright structure, one that acknowledges that copyright is relevant to Internet-published material.

Publishing on the Internet does not, in any way, eliminate your copyright on your material. Googling "copyright internet" will find many sites that make this clear.