The Rights Stuff

While designing a Web site for your bed-and-breakfast inn, you find a poem in a book that perfectly describes your Victorian home. Can you use it on your site? Or maybe you've seen a picture on another site you'd like to copy and use on yours. Can you? Of course--if you get permission from the copyright owner and pay a fee, if he or she charges one.

Copyrights, which protect authors' original works (considered "intellectual property"), can cover a wide range of endeavors, including recorded music, artwork, writing and Web sites. Copyright ownership takes effect as soon as the work is placed into fixed form, and only the author or those with permission from the author can publish or distribute the copyrighted work.

"[Although] it's intellectual instead of tangible property, copyright still constitutes property rights," says Page Miller, senior copyright information specialist with the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, DC. "It's like owning a house: Somebody can't just use your house without your permission."

How do you find out if something is copyrighted? "If something is fairly recent, [you can be sure] it's copyrighted," says Miller. Otherwise, you can search the office's records in Washington, DC, yourself or request in writing that the office do so for a fee of $20 per hour.

If you'd like to use copyrighted material on your Web site, all you have to do is ask. For printed material, contact the author through the publisher. For material you find on a Web site, e-mail a request.

Once your Web site is published, you'll be a copyright owner, too. You don't need to register your site for copyright protection or display the copyright symbol on your home page, but doing so makes it easier to fight back if someone else uses your work without permission. For copyright application forms and other information, visit the U.S. Copyright Office's Web site at http://www.loc.gov/copyright or call (202) 707-3000.

Donna Chambers is a freelance business writer and small-business owner. She can be reached at donna94142@aol.com.