Winning Ambulance Chasers. (Copyright on the Internet)

Member Name: leeroy

Product:	Copyright on the Internet
Date:	11/04/01 (50 review reads)
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Copyright on the Internet isn't as strictly enforced as it is in the "real" world at the moment but this will change over time with several different action groups looking after legitimate developer's and designer's interests, then of course, there's the ambulance chasers...

At the moment, it is very easy indeed for someone to steal code from your website and place it on theirs in original form (without providing you credit or asking your permission) or in the worst case, altering it and ruining something you've created.

As a web designer, I hate to see work that I've done become a part of someone elses project be it professional or amateur. It's not only unfair it's also an insult to us because people often ruin it. I'd personally like to see more action to stop people from doing this but it's hard to do - often, people don't realise that things are copyrighted, they assume that because it's on the internet, and the internet is free to use, then the images/designs they download must be free to use as they please - it's not the case though.

There are now companies in the states looking for sources of illegitimate work, and "ambulance chasing" - going after copycats to recover losses for the legitimate developers and taking a cut of the gains. This doesn't help anyone in the long run, except the solicitors. The designer suffers hassle et cetera and the copycat loses money.

Sometimes however it is hard to gauge whether someone has stolen your idea or just been influenced by it. For example, were you to see ten different websites with things you liked on all of them, and you combined your own version of these things into one great website, would that be illegal? Hard to judge in many cases, but in my opinion, no, as long as you don't directly copy. There's nothing to stop someone from being inspired and creating something similiar as long as th
ey are not blatantly ripping you off.

There are other areas of the internet where copyright issues are flying quite high at the moment, such as the situation with Napster. If you don't already know, Napster is an online file sharing community where people share MP3's (a type of digital music format) freely between each other. Basically, they're copying copyrighted music across the internet and infringing the artist's copyright. This is illegal, but some would argue that the artists are making so much money, it won't affect them. Artists and record labels are taking the situation very seriously indeed though and have forced Napster to remove the ability to download most of today's big names in the music industry to safeguard their intellectual property.

In the next few years of the internet, amongst all the other changes which will happen (including laws) we will undoubtedly see more protection for the developers, artists, designers and other people who put their intellectual property on the web. This is undoubtedly a good thing but it may also have a big impact upon the web as people jump on each other for what appears to be copying but may be legitimate designs which are very similiar (due to inspiration or coincidence) this is bound to cause trouble, and again, the only people who will win are the solicitors, the ambulance chasers.

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