Sometime ago I had the unpleasant experience of asking owners of a well known PNG website discussion site to delete a posting on their website. The reason was simple. A posting was made using my name as the author. The posting was a cut and paste of comments made on one of my articles on this site. And the thing which angered me was not the postings themselves but the use of my name. That in itself also constitutes abuse over the Internet. The terms of references of all Internet services using such services has a part regarding this particular aspect. I therefore had no choice but kindly remind the owners of what was being done and asked if the thread could be deleted. I actually felt bad doing this but I had no choice.

This experience prompted me to write on this particular aspect of Internet use – Copy Right and Intellectual Property Rights.

What Is A Copy Right Law?

Copy Right Law is the legislation that protects the creators of a creator work to hold exclusive rights to how their creation is used, copied or how the copies are used. If the creative work has commercial value, than copy right law becomes very important. Ideas can not be protected by copy right law, only what is produced in a tangible form from that idea is covered by the copy right law. This website provides a good overview of this subject.

What Is Intellectual Property Rights?

Intellectual Property Right is a general legal term that is used to cover the use and expression of information or ideas in their expressed form. Intellectual property covers copy right, a patent, a trademark, an industrial design right or a trade secret. For a more comprehensive cover on this topic, Wikipedia is a good place to start.

So How Does All These Apply In The Cyber World?

It’s pretty simple when it comes to the internet. Just simply ask the creator of whatever you want to use. Do not assume that just because it’s on the Internet and there is no copy right policy, I can go ahead and use it. Do not assume that anything that is on the net is in the public domain unless specifically specified to be so.

There are some common mistakes that we all we make regarding copy right and you can find some your queries answered here.