<p>Hi, I posted this in High School Life, but would also appreciate some advice from more experienced adults:</p>
<p>So I’m trying to build a resource section for my high school’s website. I want to put things like lecture notes, review sheets, etc. on it.</p>
<p>In the past three years I have downloaded a lot of notes off of people’s websites, and not necessarily from people I knew. I would typically google things like “AP Calculus Notes” and if I found something, I would download it and use it for myself, even if it came from the other side of the country.</p>
<p>My concern is, am I allowed to re-upload these files onto a site that I create? They were originally on the internet for anyone to download, no password needed or anything, and they were all originally free…so there should be no problem with me up-loading the files onto my site, right? As long as I say “this document was written by _________”, then I am not stealing their work, right?</p>
<p>No, just because you can download it for free does not mean that it is free of copyright. If it is someone else’s work, then you should either write to the person who created it for permission, or else, rather than upload to the document, simply link to it.</p>
<p>You absolutely should not post up material taken from other web sites unless the web site specifically stated that the information was being distributed with permission to freely use it, or unless you know that the site contents are in the public domain. (See Wikipedia article on “public domain” here:
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain</a> )</p>
<p>Consider that you can freely access, say, Meg McCafferty’s novels in your local library. If you were to copy parts of them for your book, you would create a scandal.</p>
<p>Copyright law has no “sale” requirement in order to trigger protection.</p>
<p>CalMom is right. You could create a “Links” page (and website owners usually like links, because it makes their pages more search-engine friendly), or ask permission. </p>
<p>Also, you should consider protecting your OWN work - while you may not want to register your site with the Copyright Office, you can use the (c) symbol to indicate that you intend to pursue your rights relating to it.</p>
<p>Calmom, Ariesathena - never really thought about this til now - do you need specific permission to create a link?? I have NOT created links before when I was concerned about the sensitivity of the information that might be on the site I was linking to, but I never really thought about permission from a copyright angle?</p>
<p>Sorry - I saw your post in High School Life before I saw the one here, and replied to that. Rather than repeating, I agree with the above; you should only link to other sites. The work on yours should be your own or that for which you have specific permission to post.</p>
<p>cangel – generally speaking, no, you don’t need permission to link under copyright law (although some attorneys would disagree). </p>
<p>However, it’s never a bad idea to ask for permisison, particularly if there is any chance that the owner of the website being linked to would object to the material on your website. That’s not really a copyright issue though, more in the realm of disparagement or maybe deceptive trade act (by implying the owner of the other website endorses what’s on your web site). </p>
<p>And while the (c) is a good idea, people should NOT assume that the lack of the (c) means the information is not protected. Copyright attaches to creative works at the moment they are created, regardless of whether the (c) is added. The (c) does give the owner certain extra rights, as does formal registration at the copyright office.</p>
<p>If you link directly to the file (say, a pdf), and your site gets a lot of traffic that leads to a bunch of traffic to download the file, you might anger the person who owns the site and has to pay for bandwidth. Also, don’t forget that the file might change without you noticing.</p>
<p>To add to and agree with the comments of lderochi and KrazyKow –
Some web sites have terms of service posted that detail their policies about linking
Most sites are happy to have links to their main web site pages and do not require advance permission for a direct link
3.However, it is generally not a good idea to link in a way where the site would end up framed within your own site - when the user clicks the link, it should take them to the other site
“Deep linking” - the practice of linking to specific pages within a site - has its perils, including the greater likelihood that the page will be changed or deleted in the future
Linking to specific files on the site, such as PDFs or software, or images is generally frown upon, because of the bandwidth issues that KrazyKow points out. If the site is providing content that are specified to be copyright free and freel distributable (such as a clip art site, or software under the GNU public license), you should copy and upload the files to our own server rather than link, OR link to the web page where the file or image can be found rather than the file or image itself.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the advice. I decided to just dig through the internet to find the contact information of all the original authors and asked them if it was okay that I host their documents on my site. Surprisingly. I got some very fast responses - in the past 6 hours, 3 out of the 6 original authors already gave me permission</p>
<p>Well, that’s the really cool thing about the internet – a lot of people are very happy to share their work, especially if they feel it is for a good cause.</p>