Legal / ethical / policy issues for your project
Someone asked last night (Vivian?) and I mistakenly said all was left on the project was to start moving toward your pitch at the end of the semester. I forgot that I’m asking you to address any legal issues.
For many of you, this will be fairly easy: you need to think about where your site assets are coming from (few sites are built completely from scratch, though yours may be!), and how you will secure and document permissions and licenses for that material. For some, things get more complex. Will you have people uploading materials, and does that mean you need to make use of the DMCA safe harbor provisions? Will you be collecting private information about people and how will you protect that? Are you going to be providing a way for people to engage in any illegal activity, including things like piracy, libel, etc.? What about arguments? How will you deal with spam, and will that be addressed in your terms of use? Do you require contractors or others? Is there some structure needed to handle payments and does that require some organizational structure (incorporation or DBA for merchant accounts, for example)?
In other words, what is an early look of some of the legal issues you expect to encounter?
November 12th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Meep
November 14th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe these hold true in most circumstances:
1. fair use: one can put a piece of another creative work into his own, providing it’s used as a reference;
2. authenticity: any work or piece thereof must be attributed to the original author;
3. misuse of intellectual content: it is not “fair use” to attract an audience to one’s own site using another’s creation; you cannot use R2D2 from Star Wars, for example, to mislead users into your site, unless that’s part of a Star Wars type site; nor can you claim any authorship of pre-existing entities.
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:40 am
I think some students may get too hung up on the copyright issues, but I understand why you emphasize them. “If in doubt, leave it out” is a good rule of thumb. As for my own project (”The Angry Red Planet”) there could be objections to using film clips or stills from Mars-related movies and such. I could claim fair use perhaps, or better, include links to where a user could buy those items from the originator (via Amazon or such) – and why complain about free advertising? A “buy it here” link page might take care of that.
November 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 am
As to the post above:
1. A reference doesn’t contain another’s work. It’s just a citation. Fair use is making use of someone’s copyrighted materials. You can do that if you meet certain requirements of fair use: for example, if you are reviewing or criticizing the material. That is the classic fair use case.
2. Generally speaking, yes, it’s a good idea to indicate who created a work.
3. The reason you can’t use R2D2 to attract an audience is that he is trademarked. Lucas was among the first to realize that by trademarking his characters he could make money on ancillary products. Again, it’s not fair use if you aren’t criticizing the work. (I have a feeling you may be conflating this a bit with appropriation laws…)
I have to say, I think it’s important that people are informed about copyright, and understand how important it is to any creative industry. But I also think it’s important that people exercise their fair use rights. If they don’t, they may find them continually eroded.