Copyright Information

Since that almost everything on the Internet nowadays is copyright protected, including this article, it is really hard to oversee the magnitude of copyright issues which may arise in case of a Internet copyright infringement situation. How far is something copyright protected, if it is publicly displayed on the Internet? How can someone make sure that his work on the internet is not infringed upon and plagiarized, and what to do if it is? The bad news go first, so here it is: Although the work on the Internet is basically copyright protected, unless someone infringes upon it and makes some serious money with it, you will not be able to do much against it. Best case scenario is that you notify the administrator or the host of the website and you notify that person of the copyright issue. Normally this host or admin takes immediate action and removes the copyright protected material. But the Internet is the playfield of all copyright pirates, just think of all the copyrighted music that is more or less readily available for download almost anywhere. A simple search for a certain mp3 piece by any artist you like, let's say by using the Google search engine, will provide dozens of hits, some of them leading to a direct download of your desired music piece. On the Internet there are many pictures, music, films, videos, documents, books and any other copyrighted material readily available for download, mostly at no charge at all, where Internet savvy individuals may find and download whatever their heart desires. It is almost impossible to prevent this from happening and although some very powerful companies, aided by most governments of the world are fighting that form of piracy, they are unable to eradicate it. But the worst is the plagiarism on the Internet. Copyright protected are even blogs and simple articles on the net, nevertheless thousands of pages are being copied every day and posted as original work by unauthorized third persons. There are legions of wannabe writers who plagiarize original work of talented individuals and for some reasons, perhaps peer acceptance, perhaps some sick validation issues, post them on the Net as their own. On one funny occasion, a moderately popular blogger got an e-mail by a reader notifying her about a person who has been ripping off her free blog and posting it on his website as his own. She couldn't understand why a person would retell her own life as his own and just change names and places. She did ask the admin to remove it though, which he did.