Copyright Ownership and Infringement Issues in the Digital Age

Whether you are an individual or a business owner, it is important to understand copyright ownership and infringement issues in protecting your digital work and in publishing online contents to the public.

So, what is copyright?

Copyright is one of the common types of intellectual property, and Intellectual property (IP) is defined as a property that derives from the work of the mind or intellect; specifically : an idea, invention, trade secret, process, program, data, formula, patent, copyright, or trademark or application, right, or registration relating thereto (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.).

Though copyright does not protect words, phrases, and logos that are used in business to identify the source of goods and/or services (as what trademark does), copyright protects the way facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation are expressed.

Copyright Ownership
Hence, the copyright law can protect your personal or business digital works like literary, publication, art, design, photo, music, computer programme, film, etc - enabling you, the copyright owner to allow or restrict personal and commercial usage of your work.

These restrictions may come in the form of putting up terms and conditions or implementing access control (eg: password protection, disallowing copy/ download, etc) for the use of your contents, digital watermarking, etc.

Copyright Infringement
The digital age together with the establishment of social media platforms have driven the increase of content creation in/ for the Internet. With ease of uploading and downloading contents from the Internet with the click of a button, one has to take note of the related online IP issues when using copyright works.

Some users assume that it is ok to use others’ copyright works for internal business engagement. However, it is necessary to seek permission or purchase the contents from the copyright owners when using copyright works for both internal and external business engagements/ operations.

Even for personal use, one has to take note of the terms and conditions before downloading or uploading the copyright materials.

When purchasing copyright contents, one has to be aware of the stated terms and conditions by the content owners on the applicable limitations (eg: to verify if the materials purchased are royalty-free) and exceptions (eg: to verify if the materials purchased can be distributed in the online channels you plan to use) for usage of the contents.

New Challenges with the Raise of Social Media Platforms
Though copyright law disallows users to re-publish copyright contents, the surge of social media platforms poses a great challenge for copyright owners to protect their works. The exponential increase of social network users makes it difficult for copyright owners to monitor the illegal sharing of copyright contents. Moreover, site owners like YouTube, Facebook, rapidshare, etc have protected themselves with terms and conditions and disclaimer clauses from their user generated contents.

On the other hand, as a content owner, if your intention is to use social media platforms for viral marketing,you have to consider on how or to what extend do you allow the re-publications of your contents by social network users.