Introduction

The Internet has created a whole new medium for exchanging ideas, images, and information. With it has come a host of questions and problems for copyright owners and for the millions of individuals who view, download, upload, and transmit works subject to copyright. Because the vast growth of the Internet is a relatively recent phenomenon, copyright law in cyberspace is still in a state of development. Yet basic copyright principles form a good foundation from which to determine whether a particular use of copyrighted materials on the Internet does, or does not, violate the law.

What a Copyright Protects

The law of copyright protection is hundreds of years old, reaching back before the Constitution to the laws of England. The earliest copyrights protected printers rather than authors. Over time, the protection shifted to the author, or creator, of the work. The Founders of the United States incorporated copyright protection into the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, grants Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Federal statutes have codified and clarified the nature and extent of an author's copyright.

To acquire copyright protection, a work must be original, it must be creative (though only minimally so), and it must be fixed in a tangible medium. The work is instantly protected by copyright once it meets these three requirements. An author does not need to file anything or to put the word copyright, or its symbol, anywhere on the work. Filing with the federal Copyright Office, however, provides additional protections. Copyrights apply to literary, artistic, musical and other creative works, including books, stories, articles, poems, drawings, photographs, computer programs and images, movies and other audiovisual works, song lyrics, sculpture, architectural works, pantomimes and choreography, and sound recordings. Needless to say, a great deal of the information that is transmitted, stored and retrieved via the Internet is protected by copyright.